Also by Paul Trynka

IGGY POP: OPEN UP AND BLEED

PORTRAIT OF THE BLUES
DENIM

COPYRIGHT
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-74812-991-1
Copyright Paul Trynka 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, without
the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
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To Kazimierz and Maureen: Heroes

CONTENTS

Also by Paul Trynka

Copyright

Introduction: Genius Steals

Part One: I Hope I Make It On My Own
1
When Im Five
2
Numero Uno, Mate!
3
Thinking About Me
4
Laughing Gnome

5
I Wish Something Would Happen
6
Check Ignition
7
All the Madmen
8
Kooks
9
Over the Rainbow
10
Battle Cries and Champagne
Part Two: Where Things Are Hollow
11
Star
12
The Changing isnt Free
13
Make Me Break Down and Cry
14
White Stains

15
Ghosts in the Echo Chambers
16
Helden
17
I Am Not a Freak
18
Snapshot of a Brain
19
On the Other Side
20
Its My Life So Fuck Off
21
The Hearts Filthy Lesson
22
The Houdini Mechanism
Discography
Notes and Sources
Acknowledgements

Index

INTRODUCTION
Genius Steals

Thursday evening, seven oclock: decadence is

about to arrive in five million front rooms. Neatly
suited dads are leaning back in the comfiest chair,
mums in their pinnies are clearing away the dishes,
while the kids still in school shirts and trousers
are clustered around the small television for their
most sacred weekly ritual.
The tiny studio audience, milling around in tank
tops and dresses, clap politely as the artist at
number forty-one in the charts strums out two
minor chords on his blue twelve-string guitar. The
camera cuts from his hands to his face, catching the
barest hint of a smirk like a child hoping to get
away with something naughty. But then as his
friends Trevor, Woody and Mick Ronson
clatter into action with a rollicking drum roll and
throaty guitar, the camera pulls back and David

Bowie meets its gaze, unflinchingly. His look is

lascivious, amused. As an audience of excited
teens and outraged parents struggle to take in the
multicoloured quilted jumpsuit, the luxuriant
carrot-top hairdo, spiky teeth and those sparkling,
mascaraed come-to-bed eyes, he sings us through
an arresting succession of images: radios, aliens,
get-it-on rock n roll. The audience is still
grappling with this confusing, over-the-top
spectacle when a staccato guitar rings out a Morse
code warning, and then, all too suddenly, were
into the chorus.
From the disturbingly new, we shift to the
reassuringly familiar: as he croons out Theres a
star man Bowies voice leaps up an octave.
Its an ancient Tin Pan Alley songwriters trick,
signalling a release, a climax. And as we hear of
the friendly alien waiting in the sky, the audience
suddenly recognises a tune, and a message, lifted
openly, outrageously, from Over the Rainbow,
Judy Garlands escapist, Technicolor wartime
anthem. Its simple, singalong, comforting territory,
and it lasts just four bars, before David Bowie

makes his bid for immortality. Less than one

minute after his face first appeared on Top of the
Pops the BBCs family-friendly music
programme Bowie lifts his slim, graceful hand to
the side of his face and his platinum-haired
bandmate Mick Ronson joins him at the
microphone. Then, casually, coolly, Bowie places
his arm around the guitarists neck, and pulls
Ronson lovingly towards him. Theres the same
octave leap as he sings starman again, but this
time it doesnt suggest escaping the bounds of
earth; it symbolises escaping the bounds of
sexuality.
The fifteen-million-strong audience struggles to
absorb this exotic, pan-sexual creature: in
countless households, the kids are entranced in
their hundreds, in thousands as parents sneer,
shout or walk out of the room. But even as they
wonder how to react, theres another stylistic
swerve; with the words let the children boogie,
David Bowie and The Spiders break into an
unashamed T. Rex boogie rhythm. For a generation
of teenagers, there was no hesitation; those ninety

seconds, on a sunny evening in July 1972, would

change the course of their lives. Up to this point,
pop music had been mainly about belonging, about
identification with your peers. This music,
carefully choreographed in a dank basement under
a south London escort agency, was a spectacle of
not-belonging. For scattered, isolated kids around
the UK, and soon the East Coast of America, and
then the West Coast, this was their day. The day of
the outsider.
In the weeks that followed, it became obvious that
these three minutes had put a rocket under the
career of a man all-too recently dismissed as a
one-hit wonder. Most people who knew him were
delighted, but there were hints of suspicion. Hip
Vera Lynn, one cynical friend called it, in a
pointed reference to The White Cliffs of Dover
the huge wartime hit that had also ripped off Judy
Garlands best-known song; this homage was too
knowing. A few weeks later, to emphasise the
point, David started singing somewhere over the
rainbow over the chorus of Starman as if to

prove Pablo Picassos maxim that talent borrows,

genius steals.
And steal he had, with a clear-eyed effrontery as
shocking as the lifted melodies themselves. The
way he collaged several old tunes into a new song
was a musical tradition as old as the hills, one still
maintained by Davids old-school showbiz friends
like Lionel Bart, the writer of Oliver!. Yet to boast
of this homage, to show the joins, brazenly, like
the lift shafts of the Pompidou centre, was a new
trick a post-modernism that was just as unsettling
as the post-sexuality hed shown off with that arm
lovingly curled over Mick Ronsons shoulder. This
appropriation might have been a hot notion in the
art scene, thanks to Andy Warhol, but for a rock n
roller to declare Im a tasteful thief defied a
sacred convention that rock n roll was an
authentic, visceral medium. Rock n roll was real;
born out of joy and anguish in the turmoil of postwar America, and sculpted into the first electric
blues. But David flaunted his lack of authenticity
with brazen abandon. The only art Ill ever study
is stuff I can steal from. I do think that my

plagiarism is effective, he told an interviewer.

The open lifting of iconic sounds was a disturbing
new form of genius. But was rock n roll now just
an art game? Was the flame-haired Ziggy Stardust
potent symbol of otherness just an intellectual
pose?
When David Bowie made his mark so elegantly,
so extravagantly, that night on Top of the Pops, in a
thrilling performance that marked out the seventies
as a decade distinct from the sixties, every one of
those contradictions was obvious; in fact, they
added a delicious tension. In the following months
and years as he dumped the band who had
shaped his music; when his much-touted influences
like Iggy Pop, the man whod inspired Ziggy,
dismissed him as a fuckin carrot-top who had
exploited and then sabotaged him; when David
himself publicly moaned that his gay persona had
damaged his career in the US those
contradictions became more obvious still.
So was David Bowie truly an outsider? Or was
he a showbiz pro, exploiting outsiders like a
psychic vampire? Was he really a starman, or was

it all cheap music-hall tinsel and glitter? Was he

gay or was it all a mask? There was evidence
aplenty for both. And that evidence multiplied in
the following months and years as fans witnessed
wide-mouthed astonishing moments like his
wired, fractured appearance on The Dick Cavett
Show, or his twitchy but charming approachability
on Soul Train. Was this bizarre behaviour also a
mask? A carefully choreographed routine?
In the following years David Bowie, and those
around him, would struggle to answer this
question. Hed emerged from a showbiz tradition
propelled chiefly by youthful ambition, his main
talent that of repositioning the brand, as one
friend puts it. That calculation, that executive
ability, as Iggy Pop describes it, marked him out
as the very antithesis of instinctive rock n roll
heroes like Elvis Presley. Yet the actions that
apparently signalled the death of rock n roll
announced a rebirth, too. Maybe this wasnt rock
n roll like Elvis had made it, but it led the way
for where rock n roll would go. Successors like
Prince or Madonna, Bono or Lady Gaga, each

seized on Bowies repositioning the brand as a

set-piece example of how to avoid artistic culs-desac like the one that imprisoned Elvis. For Bowie
himself, though, each brand renewal, each
metamorphosis, would come at a cost.
Inevitably, as David Bowies career moved
ever onwards, generations of fans wondered what
lay behind those masks. In subsequent years there
have been many accounts, either of a flint-hearted
rip-off merchant, or a natural-born genius with
some minor character flaws. Yet as the hundreds of
friends, lovers and fellow musicians who speak
within the following pages attest, the truth is far
more intriguing.
For the truth is, David Bowie behind the
glitter and showmanship didnt just change
himself on the outside; he changed himself on the
inside. Since Doctor Faustus sold his soul, or
Robert Johnson found himself at the crossroads,
artists and musicians have struggled to transcend
the talents they were born with. David Bowie, a
youth with ambition and more charm than talent,
seemed to have achieved that magical alchemy, the

achievement we all dream of: he transformed

himself, and his destiny.

PART ONE
I Hope I Make It On My Own

1
When Im Five
Everything seemed grey. We wore short
grey flannel trousers of a thick and rough
material, grey socks and grey shirts. The
roads were grey, the prefabs were grey
and the bomb sites also seemed to be
made of grey rubble.
Peter Prickett

It was a cold, wet November in 1991, like the

cold, wet Novembers of his childhood, when
David Bowie asked his driver to take the scenic
route to the Brixton Academy. The smoke-filled
coach pulled slowly down Stansfield Road, just a
few hundred yards from the venue, and paused
outside a large, anonymous three-storey Victorian

house, before moving on.

Bowie had been chatty, open, almost
surprisingly vulnerable in the last twelve weeks,
but remained silent for a few minutes as he gazed
out of the window. Then he turned around, and
guitarist Eric Schermerhorn, sitting next to him,
could see tears trickling down his employers
cheeks. Its a miracle, Bowie murmured. He was
unashamed of his vulnerability. I probably should
have been an accountant. I dont know how this all
happened.
For Schermerhorn, whod seen Bowies
showmanship and poise from close-up, the mental
image of David Robert Jones inspecting a company
spreadsheet seemed ludicrous. As had the doubts
hed expressed to Schermerhorn a few days
before: he didnt even know if he could sing. For
Schermerhorn, who had seen the mans almost
mystical ability to hold a show together and
dominate a crowd, this apparent self-doubt was
bizarre. Over the coming months, Schermerhorn
would learn from Bowies friends, and his own
observations, about the mans organisation, his

executive abilities, his talent for working the

system. Yet here was the man himself, surveying
the scene of his childhood, convinced this was
some kind of accident. The idea seemed ludicrous.
Hadnt someone so eminently glamorous always
been fated to be a star?
David Bowie has described himself as a Brixton
boy more than once. Although his stay was brief,
its an apt term. Brixton in January 1947 was a
unique location: the cultural focus of south London,
blessed with its own racy glamour, battered but
unbowed by the Luftwaffe and Hitlers terror
weapons, whose destruction was visible wherever
you walked.
It was natural that Davids father, Haywood
Stenton Jones, should gravitate towards Brixton,
for its music-hall traditions matched his own
fantasies. Born in Doncaster on 21 November,
1912, and brought up in the picturesque Yorkshire
brewery town of Tadcaster, he had a tough
childhood: his father died in the First World War,
and his mother soon afterwards. Raised by the

local council and an aunt, Haywood Jones came

into an inheritance from the family footwear
business when he was eighteen. So he bought a
theatre troupe. What a wise idea! David recounted
years later. The enterprise lost Haywood much of
his fortune, and he invested what was left in a
nightclub in Londons West End that catered to
boxers and other exotic characters. It was during
this short-lived venture that he also acquired a
wife, pianist Hilda Sullivan. When the nightclub
burned up most of his remaining cash, Haywood
came down with a stomach ulcer. The idea of
working for a childrens charity came to him in a
dream; both an exit route from his own troubles
and a way of helping kids whod suffered fractured
childhoods like his own. In September 1935 he
started work at Dr Barnardos at Stepney
Causeway, an imposing, sooty complex of
buildings in the heart of the East End, which had
provided a refuge for homeless children since the
1870s.
When the Second World War broke out,
Haywood was among the first to enlist, serving

with the Royal Fusiliers, who fought in France,

North Africa and Europe. When he returned to a
battered but victorious London in October 1945,
Haywood immediately rejoined Barnardos as
General Superintendent to the Chief of Staff. Like
many wartime marriages, Haywoods didnt last
it was doubtless damaged by an affair with a nurse
which produced a child, Annette, born in 1941.
Hayward met Margaret Burns, known as Peggy
a waitress at the Ritz Cinema on a visit to a
Barnardos home at Tunbridge Wells soon after his
return, and his divorce from Hilda only came
through in time for him to marry Peggy eight
months after the arrival of his second child, David
Robert Jones, who was born at the familys new
home at 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton, on 8 January,
1947.
In that immediate post-war period, Brixton was
cold, damp and soot-blackened and battered by
vengeance weapons. Its pre-war raciness and
music-hall glamour was only enhanced by its
recent history, and in 1947 Brixton looked to use
one of Davids favourite words especially

dystopian. This part of south London had been

judged expendable in the Second World War:
Churchills spymasters had manipulated the press
reports of where Hitlers futuristic V1 flying
bombs were landing, to ensure they fell short and
hit south London, rather than the wealthy West End.
Over forty of the pioneering cruise missiles
smashed into Brixton and Lambeth entire streets
both behind and in front of the Jones family home
were flattened. Most of the rubble had been
cleared away by 1947, but the area retained its
foreboding gap-toothed look for decades.
Davids first winter was grim. Britain in late
1947 was grim. The Second World War had
invigorated American capitalism, but had left
Britain tired, battered and near broke. There were
no street lights, no coal, gas supplies were low and
ration cards were still needed to buy linen, fuel,
economy suits, eggs and the scraggy bits of
Argentinean beef that were only occasionally
available. Christopher Isherwood, the writer who
would one day advise David to move to Berlin,
visited London that year and was shocked at its

shabbiness. London is a dying city, one local told

him, advising him not to return.
For parents, life was hard. Yet for the children
who scampered around this urban wilderness, it
was a wonderland; the abandoned, bomb-damaged
houses were playgrounds and museums, full of
intriguing treasures abandoned by long-vanished
tenants.
In later years, many of Peggy Burns friends
would notice her contempt for the Labour Party,
who had swept into power in the first post-war
election on a platform of radical social reform. Yet
given life that winter, her attitude was
understandable. The British had been exhausted by
the war, but peace had brought no improvement in
living standards. In Brixton it was impossible to
find soap, the local Woolworths was lit by
candles, Peggy had to constantly scour the local
shops to find terry towelling for nappies, and at the
end of February the Labour government introduced
power rationing, with homes limited to five hours
electricity a day. In the meantime, Haywood Jones
and the Barnardos organisation wrestled with the

problem of thousands of children displaced by the

war.
David loved his father to this day he wears a
gold cross given to him by Haywood when he was
in his teens but when asked about his relationship
with his mother in 2002, he quoted Philip Larkins
famously bleak This Be The Verse the poem
that starts, They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
The occasion was an informal live chat with
interviewer Michael Parkinson; the lines drew
laughter, as had many of Davids quips. As David
went on to recite the remaining lines of misery, the
titters gave way to uncomfortable silence.
The madness of Peggy Burns family would
one day become part of the Bowie legend, but as
far as the young David Jones was concerned, it
was remoteness a simple lack of emotion that
characterised his relationship with his mum.
Peggys sister Pat said of their mother, Margaret
Mary Burns, ne Heaton, that, she was a cold
woman. There was not a lot of love around. Peggy
seems to have inherited that coldness. Yet
according to family lore, Peggy was good with

children in her youth, working as a nanny before

falling in love with the handsome Jack Isaac
Rosenberg, son of a wealthy Jewish furrier.
Rosenberg promised to marry Peggy, but
disappeared before the birth of their son, and
Davids half-brother, Terence Guy Adair Burns,
on 5 November, 1937.
There were darker shadows in Peggys past,
too. In 1986 her sister Pat the frightful aunt as
Bowie later termed her went on the record to
detail the troubled history of the Burns family.
Peggy and Pats siblings included three sisters
Nora, Una and Vivienne who, according to Pat,
suffered from degrees of mental instability; what
one writer termed the Burns family affliction.
This history later inspired the theory that David
Jones was forced to construct alter-egos to
distance himself from the madness within. Ken Pitt,
Davids future manager, knew David, Peggy and
Pat as well as anyone, and describes this theory as
unconvincing. Although David would later
gleefully celebrate his family, announcing, most of
them are nutty in, just out of, or going into an

institution, most people who knew them

considered Haywood friendly and sincere and
found Peggy talkative once you got to know her,
with many traces of her former vivaciousness.
Peggy had a third child, Myra Ann, born in
August 1941, before she met Haywood the result
of another wartime romance. The child was given
up for adoption and by the time she met Haywood,
Peggy was ready to settle down to a conventional
life and agreed to marry the Yorkshireman on the
condition that he accept Terence as his son. So for
the first nine years of his life, David had an elder
brother to look up to; and when Terry left home in
1956 to join the Royal Air Force, he remained the
object of Davids hero-worship. The messy,
confused nature of the Jones household was hardly
unusual illegitimate births had soared in wartime
Britain; some historians blame a shortage of rubber
and hence a fall in condom production. Davids
troubled relationship with his mother echoed that
of contemporaries like John Lennon and Eric
Clapton, both of whom were raised in households
that today would have a social worker knocking on

the door.
As David grew into a toddler, austerity
continued to keep a tight grip, but glimmers of hope
started to appear. 1953, a year treasured by many
kids, marked an end to sweet rationing and the
advent of television. Haywood Jones was one of
thousands who bought a new set so the family
could watch the coronation of the glamorous young
Queen Elizabeth. Just a few weeks later, the sixyear-old David snuck downstairs for another TV
landmark The Quatermass Experiment, a
pioneering BBC science-fiction series that had all
of Britain glued to the screen. This tremendous
series would leave its mark on David, who
remembers how hed watch each Saturday night
from behind the sofa when my parents had thought
I had gone to bed. After each episode I would
tiptoe back to my bedroom rigid with fear, so
powerful did the action seem. The programme
sparked a lifelong fascination with science fiction
and through its theme tune: the dark, sinister,
Mars, The Bringer of War from Holsts Planet
Suite the emotional effect of music.

Brixton was the perfect breeding ground for a

future Ziggy Stardust. Waterloo, the Mecca of
music-hall artists for a century or more, was just
down the road, while Brixtons own Empress
Theatre hosted Tony Hancock, Laurel and Hardy,
and countless other Variety stars. Show business
people were scattered all the way from Kennington
to Streatham, says Davids near-neighbour, the
photographer Val Wilmer. Many locals still talked
of Charlie Chaplin, who had grown up just north of
Brixton; Sharon Osbourne, five years younger than
David, lived on the other side of Brixton Road
with her father Don Arden, a failed nightclub
singer and comedian, and she remembers being
surrounded by all the Vaudeville artists. Kids
could look out of the window and see comedians
chatting in the corner shop, racy characters in
cheap suits and hats, carrying cases that might
contain a ventriloquists dummy, a banjo or a set of
knives for their knife-throwing act, on their way to
or from a show.
Davids home at 40 Stansfield Road was a
roomy, three-storey terraced Victorian house,

shared, during most of their eight years in Brixton,

with two other families. In later years, with
conventional rock-star spin, David Bowie
described his Brixton youth like a walk on the wild
side, with gangs roaming the street. The local kids
did indeed wander around the area freely, but their
prey was butterflies, tadpoles and other urban
wildlife. It was unbelievable, says Davids
neighbour and schoolmate Sue Larner, there were
these huge spaces from the bomb sites, and ruined
houses, which seemed like mountains to us,
covered in buddleia: they were our playgrounds.
Derelict buildings at the bottom of Stansfield Road
were sinister, yet fragrant kids scampered around
the sweet-smelling blooms with nets, for there
were more butterflies around than before or since,
while the many pools and ponds in south Londons
abandoned bomb sites were packed with tadpoles
and newts. Rats also meandered casually through
the abandoned buildings, and local kids still
remember the sound of mice scurrying around the
draughty, un-carpeted Victorian houses at night, as
they clutched a hot water bottle for warmth and

comfort.
In those early years, the Jones family kept
themselves to themselves. Most local kids played
out on the street, but David generally remained
with his mum, and Haywood spent his days at
Barnardos in Stepney. In 1951, David started
school at Stockwell Infants, three minutes walk
away from home on Stockwell Road, one of
Brixtons main streets. He remembers wetting his
pants on the first day; happily, friendly milk lady
Bertha Douglas kept a supply of clean knickers for
such everyday emergencies. Stockwell Infants
lofty Victorian building looked severe, with its
characteristic aroma of disinfectant and rubber
plimsolls, but the staff were mostly loving and
kind. It was a sweet, friendly school; small and
cosy, remembers schoolmate Suzanne Liritis. The
teachers used to tell us things like, youre special,
Jesus loves you, says her friend, Sue Larner.
Behind the Victorian primness, things were
more exotic than they seemed. The headmistress,
Miss Douglas, was tall and thin with severe,
scraped-back grey hair. This formidable woman

lived with Miss Justin, who taught in the Junior

School. Only later did Sue and her friends
conclude they were obviously a sweet lesbian
couple. If any parents suspected a relationship,
they were unconcerned, for as Larner points out,
Lots of women had lost their beaus in the war.
They took the conventional British attitude: exotic
sexuality was fine, as long as it was kept behind
closed doors. Dont frighten the horses, as the
saying went.
Most of the families around Stansfield Road
were large, with kids invariably accompanied on
their adventures by brothers and sisters. Maybe its
for that reason that few of them remember David.
Sue Larner was one of the only children who did
notice him; now a sculptor, she recalls noticing the
nice-looking, well-scrubbed boys skill at art.
None of us had much to do with boys, but I do
remember showing him a few tricks on the drawing
board and he showed me even more. He showed
me how to draw a womans bonnet, with the neck,
without having to draw a face first. He was good.
At weekends, or after school, the five-year-old

Davids universe was bounded by the bomb sites

on Chantrey Road and the far side of Stockwell
Road, where all kids played: turning left on
Stockwell Road, hed immediately reach the
school playground; turning right, hed walk past
two sweet shops, the nearest overseen by a kindly,
camp gentleman. Further down Stockwell Road
was the Astoria: later a famed rock venue the
Academy whose attractions would include David
Bowie, in the fifties it was still a thriving local
cinema, with morning matinees featuring cowboy
movies, Zorro or Laurel and Hardy. On the way to
the cinema, a book-shop sprawled out onto the
pavement, filled with comics and kids books.
There was a large dairy, with horse-drawn carts,
but the main feature that dominated Stockwell
Road was Pride and Clarkes, a celebrated
motorbike and car showroom that sprawled across
a row of maroon-painted buildings, later
immortalised in Antonionis Blowup. This was
where David, the future petrol-head, could ogle
BSAs, Rileys and other legendary British bikes
and cars.

As for another intrinsic part of Brixtons appeal,

the sound of calypso and the smell of curried goat,
these were things David would only have got a
whiff of. For in 1954, Haywood Jones and family
packed up for suburbia.
It was John Betjeman, the beloved poet laureate,
who described the suburbs as the home of a new
kind of citizen. As fitting proof of its futurism,
Davids new home, Bromley, was also the
birthplace of H. G. Wells. From the 1950s
onwards, the suburbs were an object of both horror
and aspiration the upper classes despised the
prim, mock-Tudor houses, while the middle
classes flocked to such neatly manicured streets.
Today, like many English market towns, Bromley
is bland and overrun by chain stores: Wells
birthplace is now a Primark clothing outlet. But in
the fifties it was a place in flux a short train ride
from London, but smaller and friendlier. It was
actually quite charming, says Davids boyhood
friend, Geoff MacCormack, even soulful.
The move to Bromley marked Haywoods

promotion from board secretary to Public

Relations Officer. Haywoods colleagues regarded
him as unassuming but cheerful good company.
The Jones new home, a small but neat Edwardian
terraced house in Plaistow Grove a cul-desac
near the railway line was perfectly in keeping
with the familys modestly respectable status.
Parts of Bromley were middle-class enclaves
1930s fake Tudor with leaded windows to
proclaim their superior status but poverty was
never far away. Children and their parents were
encouraged to save 6d a week in the Burnt Ash
School Boot Club to help them buy adequate
footwear and there was no shortage of
Dickensian sights. A costermonger, or rag-andbone man, walked the streets, uttering the Any old
iron cry familiar from Victorian times. Several
streets still boasted gas lighting, and in most parts
of Bromley there was hardly a car to be seen
parked at the curbside. United Dairies, which had
a yard behind Burnt Ash School, still used horses
to deliver milk, which was deposited on
everybodys doorstep each morning. Even in the

1950s, electrical supplies were erratic; radios or

record players were usually plugged into the light
socket in the ceiling, while electric clocks often
slowed down in the afternoon, at the time of heavy
demand, then would speed up again at night. Few
people owned telephones the Joneses were an
exception.
David joined Burnt Ash School a couple of
years after most of his classmates and didnt
particularly stand out during the first few terms.
Within a year or so, however, David was part of a
small gang, including Dudley Chapman and John
Barrance, who lived nearby and were invited to
Davids eighth birthday party. Even at this age,
many kids noted the cramped interior of the Jones
modest two-up, two-down house. John Barrance
thought the family seemed restrained, quiet. They
were perfectly pleasant, but I think they had a
dont touch this, dont touch that attitude.
Davids friend Max Batten shared more easygoing
times with him, enjoying lollipops, chatting with
Mrs Jones and, one memorable afternoon, sneaking
upstairs and unwrapping Haywoods service

revolver. The two boys played with it furtively,

before carefully replacing it in the drawer where it
had been concealed.
Though few of his contemporaries remember it
as being anything out of the ordinary, in later years
Davids background would be portrayed as
dysfunctional mostly by David himself. In the
mid-seventies, when he was in his most
flamboyantly deranged phase, he loved to
proclaim, everyone finds empathy in a nutty
family. Peggy, in particular, was singled out as the
perfect exemplar of repression and eccentricity,
but the most damning recollection of others is that
she was a snob. In general, it was only the more
middle-class children were treated to a welcome
and a cup of tea at Plaistow Grove, and David
seemed to learn which of his friends should be
ushered in the front door and which ones were
worthy only to wait at the garden gate. In fairness,
its possible Peggy simply preferred boys who,
like David, were trained to say please and thank
you. John Hutchinson, a well-brought-up
Yorkshire lad who enjoyed sitting in the back room

with its cosy fireplace and photos on the

mantelpiece, maintains that, she was nice,
remembering how in future years she would knit
outfits for his young son, Christian. Some of the
tensions between Peggy and David were simply
due, says Hutchinson, to the generational shift that
would soon grip the country, the advent of the
teenager and the fact that, as he puts it, it became
cool to put down your parents. In future years,
Peggys sister Pat bore witness to other tensions
within the family. In their first year in Bromley,
Terry was apparently left behind in Brixton, which
was thought to be more convenient for his job as a
clerk in Southwark. Later he rejoined David,
Peggy and Haywood at Plaistow Grove, but his
presence before he left to prepare for National
Service in 1955 was brief; not one of Davids
friends remember seeing him at the Jones house. If
parents fuck you up, as David put it, then
undoubtedly Terry suffered more than his brother.
Peggys own friends, such as Aubrey
Goodchild, maintain Davids mum was good
company. Forthright, though. And conservative in

her politics. And David wasnt the only one who

felt frustrated or hemmed in by his family.
Compared to America, with its consumer boom,
movies and comic-book heroes, Britain was staid
and its kids felt suffocated. We were shabby,
says Bromley schoolgirl Dorothy Bass.
Everything seemed grey, remembers another
contemporary, Peter Prickett. We wore short grey
flannel trousers of a thick and rough material, grey
socks and grey shirts. The roads were grey, the
prefabs were grey and there were still quite a few
bomb sites around in 1956 these also seemed to
be made of grey rubble. Life was predictable,
defined by rituals. Some of them were oddly
comforting, like the tiny glass bottles of free milk
handed out at school every morning at 11 oclock,
the National Anthem that was played on BBC radio
and TV before they closed down for the night, or
Davids volunteer job at school putting up the
climbing ropes in the playground each morning.
For its time, Burnt Ash was a modern school,
with an emphasis on art particularly in the form
of Music and Movement classes, during which the

pupils were encouraged to express themselves,

dancing around in their underwear. No one owned
a PE kit. In other respects it followed fifties
norms: a strict uniform policy, formal assemblies
with hymns and the cane for misbehaving boys.
Headmaster George Lloyd was, in the words of
one pupil, interesting. Slightly portly, and jolly,
he took classes in music and reading, individually
tutoring his pupils one-on-one. He was gentle,
affectionate with the children, and often sat
alongside boys as they read, putting his arm around
the favoured pupil. There were a few boys for
whom he seemed to have real affection, and one
of them, says a schoolmate, was David. He
definitely did like David.
At ten or eleven, David had delicate, almost
elfin features, hair cut in bangs, was average in
height and slightly skinny. But there was an energy
and enthusiasm about him that seemed to win over
George Lloyd and others, the beginnings of a knack
of charming people. He was a good-looking boy
a fact his female classmates noticed later and
even by his teens he was developing a talent for

using charm as a weapon, says a later confidante,

writer Charles Shaar Murray. Even if youd fallen
out, when you met David again youd be convinced
within five minutes that he had barely been able to
function in the years he hadnt seen you. I know for
a time, I developed a kind of platonic man-love for
him.
It was this charm, this ability to be whoever his
confidante wanted him to be, that would be the
making of David Bowie; its what brought him his
breaks, the opportunities his ever-active mind
worked out how to exploit. In these early days, that
charm was not deployed so intensely, or so
ruthlessly. Still, he was just, somehow, one of the
kids you noticed, says schoolmate Jan Powling,
bright, quite funny, with oodles of personality.
He was invariably neatly dressed, more so than his
classmates: always well scrubbed, with clean
fingernails, says Powling. In short, the kind of
boy that if you were his mum, you would have been
really proud of him.
Well scrubbed, polite, every suburban mothers
dream son, the ten-year-old David Jones also stuck

to middle-class conventions by enrolling in the

local Scout Pack and Church of England choir.
We were slung in, says fellow cub scout Geoff
MacCormack, because thats what parents did
with kids then. We didnt kick up a fuss, we just
got on with it. Like Keith Richards, one of BadenPowells unlikeliest champions, the kids lapped up
the outdoors adventures. The weekly pack meets
and services became a crucial part of Davids life,
because it was there that he met MacCormack and
George Underwood, who would prove the most
enduring friends of his life. Together, the three
donned cassocks, surplices and ruffles for church
services, as well as the frequent weddings that
would become the future David Bowies first
paying gigs as a singer. Not only were you paid
five shillings a princely sum in those days, says
MacCormack, but if the ceremony took place in
the week you got a day off school.
George Underwoods family lived on the other
side of Bromley, so he was enrolled at a different
primary school. Tall for his age, good-looking
with an easy, relaxed but passionate air about him,

he would become the closest friend of Davids

youth. Their relationship would go through some
rocky patches, but would be a formative one in
their lives. For the glue that held their friendship
together was rock n roll.
For most of David and Georges generation there
was a Eureka! moment, the instant when rock n
roll exploded into their consciousness: an escape
route from their grey world. For both boys, that
moment hit in 1955. Towards the end of that year,
the movie Blackboard Jungle caused a sensation
in the UK, generating widespread outrage as
politicians denounced the baleful influence of the
rock n rollers, like Bill Haley, that it celebrated.
Around the same time, Haywood arrived home
from Stepney Causeway one evening with a bag
full of singles which hed been given. That night,
David played each of the records: Fats Domino,
Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon and The
Teenagers. Then, he says, I hit gold: Tutti
Frutti by Little Richard my heart nearly burst
with excitement. Id never heard anything even

resembling this. It filled the room with energy and

colour and outrageous defiance. I had heard God.
More than anyone else, Little Richard would be a
touchstone, an embodiment of sex, glamour and
cranked-up music, of the future David Bowies
career: I always wanted to be Little Richard he
was my idol.
Born Richard Penniman, the most controversial,
genre-busting early rock n roller would make a
potent
touchstone.
Many
of
Davids
contemporaries, like The Rolling Stones Keith
Richards, would cite Muddy Waters and Chuck
Berry as their heroes; they represented authentic
blues, forged deep in the Mississippi Delta. Little
Richard was a city boy: he had made his name in
New Orleans, studying outrageous performers like
Guitar Slim and Esquerita, hanging out in a camp,
cross-dressing scene where fur-coated queens
competed to deliver the best impressions of Dinah
Washington or Sarah Vaughan. His records were a
far cry from Muddys deep, soulful songs of
yearning or sexual bravado: they were miniexplosions of sound, cranked up using the citys

best session men and designed to pack in the

maximum thrills possible within the two minutes
and thirty seconds allowed by the Souths jukebox
operators. Richard Penniman didnt only rely on
his innate musicianship, or thrilling voice: he
packaged his music in outrageous showmanship
and brightly coloured suits. Later he would come
out as gay; eventually he would find God; much
later, David Bowies wife would buy one of
Richards suits for her husband. Throughout all
those years, David Jones would treasure the first
Little Richard records he bought, on Bromley High
Street. Elvis Presley would be another idol all
the more so when David discovered he shared a
birthday with the ultimate white rock n roll icon
but Little Richard would be the cornerstone of
Davids musical identity.
Little Richards primacy was confirmed when
he became the first American rock n roll star to
be beamed into the homes of British television
viewers, on 16 February, 1957, when the BBC
unveiled its momentous Six-Five Special, a TV
show aimed at teenagers which included segments

of classical music, dance competitions and a short

extract from the movie Dont Knock the Rock ,
with Richard performing Tutti Frutti. Over the
next few weeks the programme would feature more
Little Richard, British rockers Tommy Steele and
Adam Faith plus, tellingly, Lonnie Donegan.
Like many British teenagers, David Jones and
George Underwood idolised Little Richard, but
copied Lonnie Donegan. Today Donegans music
is comparatively neglected, but the influence of his
DIY ethos lives on in British music from The
Beatles to the Sex Pistols. Donegans take on
American performers like Lead Belly was
gloriously naive his music was made on the
simplest of instruments and his technical
deficiencies were part of his charm. It could take a
schoolboy years of practice to emulate Little
Richard or Chuck Berry, but you could attempt
Lonnies brand of skiffle after a few afternoons.
Donegans home-grown skiffle signalled the end of
the UKs outdated dance culture and inspired a
generation of British rock n rollers, among them
the eleven-year-old Jones and Underwood. For all

the kids raised in post-war austerity, this was a

moment theyd somehow anticipated, for years.
Wed waited and waited for something fabulous
to happen, says George Underwood. And it did
happen. That was the catalyst. And from then on,
music was the one thing we talked about
constantly.
At Burnt Ash, there were a couple of kids whod
become known as rock n roll fans Ian Carfrae,
later of the New Vaudeville Band, was
admonished by the headmaster for bringing Rock
Around the Clock into 1955s Christmastime
gramophone-listening sessions. But while David
eventually became the better-known, it was George
Underwood who got his rock n roll act together
before everyone else. Hed already bought a huge
Hofner acoustic guitar and formed a duo with a
family friend by the time he met David, who
owned a ukulele and had a burning desire to be in
a band. Roughly a year after theyd first met, the
two travelled down to the 18th Cub Scouts
Summer Camp on the Isle of Wight, in the summer
of 1958. We put a washboard bass in the back of

the van, and Davids ukulele, and between us we

managed to conjure up a couple of songs around
the camp fire. And that was our first public
performance. Neither of us had any claim to
virtuosity but we wanted to sing.
That tentative first show, with David strumming
and George singing, was not the only rite of
passage that year. The previous autumn David had
sat his 11-plus, the crucial exam that would
determine his future school. The Burnt Ash pupils
were well prepared, and under the gimlet eye of
Davids respected and feared teacher, Mrs Baldry,
David and most of his friends passed. The rigid
pecking order of schools in the area started with
Beckenham and Bromley Grammar at the top,
followed by Bromley Technical School which
had opened in 1959 and was aimed at future
commercial artists and engineers with
Quernmore Secondary Modern languishing in the
rear. Later in life, David would advise one of his
closest friends to do the contrary action and he
first did that himself at the age of eleven. Though
Davids results were good enough for the grammar

school, against all expectations, he opted for

Bromley Tech, and talked his parents into
supporting his decision.
Some of the inspiration for this precociously
unconventional move undoubtedly came from
George Underwood, who was also heading for
Bromley Tech. The Techs links with the nearby
Bromley College of Art also meant that he would
join a wider community, of the art school kids who
would ultimately come to define post-war Britain.
Contemporaries and near neighbours, like the
Stones Keith Richards and The Pretty Things
Dick Taylor the war babies, as Richards would
describe them were already embarked on the
same course. The notion that a generation of kids
could make a living via art was novel, born of the
radical reworking of the British educational system
in 1944. The art college system provided the
foundation of Britains future influence on art,
advertising, publishing, movies and fashion. As
countless former pupils point out, art college taught
them that, rather than working in an office or
factory, youths could make a living with merely

ideas. This freedom was all the more powerful

for being combined with an unrelenting post-war
work ethic. We understood then, says Davids
friend, Dorothy Bass, that after your two years at
art college, you would have to pay your dues.
Bromley Tech had moved to a new site
alongside Bromley College of Art just one year
earlier, and with its airy concrete-and-glass
building, it seemed modern and forward looking.
Yet its structure aped the English public school,
with pupils organised into houses, and some
teachers dressed in capes and mortar boards for
formal assemblies, to which Catholic or Jewish
pupils were not invited. Every morning, David and
his friends sang Victorian-era hymns like Onward
Christian Soldiers and murmured amen in
response to prayers for the Royal Family and other
pillars of the establishment.
For all the formality of Bromley Tech, the
quality of teaching was variable with the
exception of the art department, which was housed
in a custom-designed building with north-facing
windows to give better natural light for painting.

Owen Frampton, the head of the department, was

undoubtedly the schools best-liked teacher. He
was enthusiastic David describes him as an
excellent art teacher and an inspiration but no
pushover. Owen, or Ossy, not only had a superb
eye for art, but could also unerringly spot mischief,
says John Edmonds, a student who recalls he once
threw a snowball at a teacher, unobserved, only to
learn later, when pulled out of class, that the
beady-eyed Head of Art had seen the incident. I
did gain a respect both for his eyesight, and his
skills with the slipper, he recalls, ruefully.
Frampton was a man of eclectic background and
tastes: he had served in the Royal Artillery in
wartime; designed wallpaper for the Sanderson
company; could explain, in inspiring terms, both
classical and modern art (David would mention
him as the source of his interest in the painter Egon
Schiele) and also played guitar, as did his son
Peter, who enrolled at Bromley Tech in 1961.
Peter, David and George soon became well known
around the school. George and David found a spot
in the stairwell which had a natural echo and used

it as an informal practice space: My big hero was

Buddy Holly and although David wasnt a big fan
we used to do Buddy Holly numbers, says
George. David was a great harmoniser, so we
used to work on a lot of that material together, by
the stairs. Peter used to sit on the school steps
with a guitar, showing kids how to play Shadows
or Ventures riffs, and started calling himself Paul
Raven.
David paid rapt attention during Owens art
classes, sketching with charcoals or simply
hanging out in the art department, but year-by-year
his interest in other subjects declined, to the point
that, in his third year, his school report described
him as a pleasant idler. At fourteen, he had
succumbed to the obsessions that would define the
years to come: music and girls. He would feed
both these addictions after school, in a
quintessentially suburban location on Bromley
High Street: Medhursts department store, a huge
Victorian building that sold furniture and other
household goods and also boasted one of south
Londons best gramophone departments. Housed in

a long, narrow corridor, the gramophone section

was overseen by a discreetly gay couple named
Charles and Jim. Although they stocked the
customary chart hits and sheet music, they were
also aficionados of modern jazz music and
specialised in American imports. David soon
turned up most afternoons after school to check out
new releases at their listening booth. His interest
in music had become an obsession, and as time
went on, his tastes would become more and more
eclectic encouraged by Terry, his record
collection expanded to include jazz releases by
Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus. Soon he
gained the status of a regular and Jim, the younger
of the two partners, would let him have records at
a discount, as would Jane Green, the assistant. She
soon took a liking to David. Whenever I would
pop in, which was most afternoons after school,
shed let me play records in the sound booth to
my hearts content till they closed at 5.30. Jane
would often join me and we would smooch bigtime to the sounds of Ray Charles or Eddie
Cochran. This was very exciting as I was thirteen

or fourteen, and she would be a womanly

seventeen at that time. My first older woman.
The Medhursts gramophone booth became a
prime hangout for many teenagers seeking glamour
on Bromley High Street. In this small world, the
arrival of an Indian curry house in the early sixties
was an event of seismic importance, as was the
opening of two Wimpy coffee bars shortly
afterwards, one in north and one in south Bromley.
The teenagers would hang out in the library
gardens, south of the market square, trying to look
cool in their mostly shabby clothes: the girls wore
black pullovers from Marks and Spencer the
nearest they could get to a Parisian beat look
while David would take trips into town in search
of Italian trousers. These rebels with a cause
included David, George Underwood and Geoff
MacCormack and they were also occasionally
joined by a merchant seaman named Richard
Dendy, who brought back obscure records from
New York, and Dorothy Bass, who went out
briefly with George their relationship mainly
inspired by their shared love of music. George was

charming and good-looking remembers Dorothy,

and well known around Bromley, but not pushy,
not look-at-me. Neither was David really,
she continues, but he was really driven. David
shows the difference between someone whos
good and someone who devotes their life to what
they believe in.
Nearly all the Bromley Tech pupils from this
time seem to recall George and David as a pair,
and of the two, George is the better remembered.
He was ebullient, lovable, expansive; David was
cool people noticed his clothes, his hair, his
possessions, mostly, rather than his personality. In
later years, when his first band became known
around school, he was kind to younger kids, but
several of his contemporaries share the impression
of Len Routledge, who remembers, I think I
envied him, or resented him, as kids do. Because
he had a better lifestyle than us, and a father whod
bring him things some of us could never expect: a
full American football kit, the saxophone etc. I
genuinely admired what he achieved but the
comfortable circumstances of his life contrasted

sharply with me, and many of the other boys.

The contrast with the Jones previously modest
lifestyle was stark. As Haywood progressed in his
career at Barnardos, the one area where he was
generous profligate, even with money was
David. A few friends remember Davids
acquisition of his American football gear, but even
more of them noticed David conspicuously
brandishing a saxophone around the Tech.
Originally hed wanted a baritone sax, but he had
to settle for a Grafton alto, a cheaper, but
nonetheless glamorous, cream plastic Art-Deco
concoction, which Haywood bought him around
1960. For a short time, David managed to blag
lessons with baritone player Ronnie Ross, whod
played with the bandleader Ted Heath and other
big bands, and lived nearby. Although the musical
value of the eight or so lessons was probably
negligible, Ronnies value for name-dropping
purposes was incalculable, and probably helped
David score a Saturday morning job at Furlongs,
the record and instrument store in Bromley South.
This little music shop, run by a pipe-smoking,

trumpet-playing trad jazz fan, was a Mecca in

Bromleys tiny musical landscape, its noticeboard
providing a hotline to news of local bands
formation and dissolution, while Davids new role
of turning customers on to new sounds helped
fuel a new credibility in the music community and,
just as crucially, with local girls.
Even though peers like George Underwood
overshadowed David as a musician, his
confidence got him noticed. The most celebrated
example was when the Tech pupils embarked on
what was, for almost everyone, their first foray
outside England a school trip to Spain over the
Easter holidays in 1960. Many families couldnt
afford the trip, but David was one of the first, and
the youngest, to sign up. The small troupe took the
ferry to Dieppe, then a coach all the way to Spain.
There, they watched a bullfight, goggled at
Francos armed militia and moaned about the spicy
foreign food. The other kids exchanged smiles, or
played football with the Spanish kids; Jones spent
much of the day with the local talent, off chatting
to the girls, classmate Richard Comben

remembers. Davids prowess was commemorated

in the school magazines reference to Don Jones,
the lover, last seen pursued by thirteen senoritas.
David describes his behaviour once hed
discovered girls as terrible, a quintessential
smooth operator. But as far as Bromleys female
population were concerned, he was anything but,
says Jan Powling: He was nice, charming not at
all any kind of show-off. She knew David from
Burnt Ash Junior and, around their third year at
secondary school, David asked her out on a date.
As was traditional, he phoned Mr Powling to ask
for his permission a day or two before the outing,
which at some point became a double date. So it
was a group of four teenagers who took the 94 bus
to the Bromley Odeon cinema: Davids moral
support was Nick, a Bromley Tech acquaintance,
while Jan was accompanied by Deirdre, her friend
from Burnt Ash Secondary girls school. It was
unfortunate, reflects Jan, that Deirdre was one of
the most popular girls in her year, with a blonde
bob and trendy clothes. By the end of the evening,
David departed arm-in-arm with Deirdre, while

Jan had been paired off with Nicholas. But I dont

blame David, she adds, generously, she was one
of the prettiest girls we knew.
Not everyone was as forgiving of Davids
emerging jack-the-lad behaviour. One example of
Davids duplicity would become famous in
Bromley Tech folklore, and subsequently in rock
n roll history, for it would leave David marked
out: an outward sign of what was later taken to be
his alien nature.
George Underwood was involved in the
celebrated fracas, which is somewhat surprising
given that he is the most likeable and mildmannered of characters. But he was incited to
violence by an act of outright skulduggery by his
friend in the spring of 1962, when both boys were
fifteen. George had arranged a date with a Bromley
school girl, Carol Goldsmith, only for David to tell
him she had changed her mind and wasnt coming.
Soon George discovered that David, who fancied
Carol himself, had lied Carol had waited in vain
for George before going home after an hour or so,
distraught that shed been stood up. Davids plan

was to swoop in on the abandoned girl, but when

Underwood discovered the dastardly scheme there
was an altercation. Underwood, enraged,
impulsively punched his friend in the eye, and by
some mishap scratched his eyeball. It was just
unfortunate. I didnt have a compass or a battery or
various things I was meant to have I didnt even
wear a ring, although something must have caught. I
just dont know how it managed to hurt his eye
badly I didnt mean it to be like that at all.
The damage was serious. David was taken to
hospital and his school-mates were told he was in
danger of losing the sight in his left eye.
Underwood, mortified, heard that Haywood and
Peggy Jones were considering charging him with
assault. With David absent from school for several
weeks, George eventually plucked up enough
courage to go and see Haywood. I wanted to tell
him it wasnt intentional at all. I didnt want to
maim him, for Gods sake! The injury to Davids
eye resulted in paralysis of the muscles that
contract the iris, leaving the pupil permanently
dilated and giving it the appearance of being a

different colour from his other eye. His depth

perception was also damaged. It left me with a
wonky sense of perspective, David explained
later. When Im driving for instance, cars dont
come towards me, they just get bigger. It was
weeks before David returned to Bromley Tech,
and at least a month before he talked to George
(Haywood, too, would eventually forgive him, but
it took some time). The rift meant that David
missed out on a momentous event: the arrival of
rock n roll at Bromley Tech, in April 1962.
Owen Frampton was one of the key figures in the
talent show, overseeing the lights and the PA
system. His sons band, The Little Ravens, played
the first half, sandwiched between a magician and
a dance duo. Underwoods band, George and the
Dragons, came on after the interval, a louder, more
raucous show than Frampton juniors outfit: very
avant-garde for the time, recalls Pete Goodchild,
who was in the audience.
Underwood wonders to this day how the gig
would have sounded if his friend had appeared on
stage with him. By the summer term, their

friendship was repaired, although Underwood

suffered pangs of guilt for years afterwards. I was
always looking at him, thinking, Oh God, I did
that. Eventually, David would thank George for
the notorious eye injury he told me it gave him a
kind of mystique although for decades
afterwards George would get irritated when David
said he had no idea why his friend had punched
him. He gave the impression he doesnt know why
I did it. And he should have known.
Underwoods disappointment that his best friend
missed George and the Dragons Easter show was
as short-lived as the band. George went on to play
in both The Hillsiders and The Spitfires over this
period, and soon after Easter teamed up with the
Kon-Rads, a rather old-fashioned dance-based
band formed a few months earlier by drummer
Dave Crook and guitarist Neville Wills. Once
George was in, he invited David along, too, asking
him to join the band on saxophone, with the
proviso, Im the singer, but you can do a couple of
numbers. David brought his Grafton down to
rehearsals. He looked a bit like Joe Brown at the

time, so we said you can do A Picture of You,

and A Night at Daddy Gs.
David Bowies first public performance took
place just a few weeks later, on 12 June, 1962, at
the Bromley Tech PTA School Fte. This was the
Techs biggest ever summertime event the PTA
bought a new PA system for the show, and four
thousand parents and locals attended. No one got to
hear Davids Joe Brown impression that afternoon,
though the Kon-Rads set consisted strictly of
instrumentals.
David, his hair arranged in a blonde quiff, stood
with his cream sax slung to one side, next to
George Underwood, who picked out Shadows
riffs on his Hofner guitar. David looked cool,
well dressed according to schoolmate Nick
Brookes. It was a pretty impressive debut, but
there was a clear consensus among most of the
audience about who would go on to stardom:
Davids taller, better-looking, more popular
friend. It was George who was the singer, who
did a great Elvis impression, says Tech pupil
Roger Bevan, who remembers, like many other

pupils, Underwoods dark, glossy hair and Elvis

sneer. Everyone reckoned he was going to be
big.

2
Numero Uno, Mate!
I was ambitious. But not like he was.
George Underwood

In late 1962, reputations were fast being made in

south-east London, as a new wave of rock n roll
young bucks set out to kill off Englands staid,
suffocating music scene. Kent schoolboys Mick
Jagger and Keith Richards were bonding over
Chess Records albums and renewing their
childhood friendship at Alexis Korner shows, and
the future Pretty Things were emerging from the
same Kent scene. This was matched by similar
setups in west London, Surrey or Newcastle as
dozens of musicians, from Eric Clapton to Eric
Burdon, Paul Jones to Keith Relf embarked on a

fast-lane to fame.
So, what was an under-age kid with a sax to do?
David Jones, just a couple of years younger than
most of those figures, was marooned, destined to
miss the wave that everyone else was catching.
While Clapton was becoming God, David was
merely the cool kid in class: well liked, noted for
his skinny trousers and blond hair, cheerful and
indulgent with the younger students whod follow
him around the playground, asking about music or
baseball. The damaged eye added a dangerous,
disconcerting glamour to his otherwise
conventional pretty-boy looks, but as far as native
talent goes, David seemed like a supporting act to
his friend George Underwood more relaxed,
more masculine who remained the centre of
attention at Bromley Tech.
Most of the kids who saw the Kon-Rads
remember few details of their first couple of
shows, but that wasnt the point; they were out
there, living out the new DIY ethos. Today, their
Conway Twitty and Joe Brown covers would
sound gauche and naive, but to their peers, they

were sweeping away Englands suffocating

conformity, its smug dance bands and crooners.
Yet before their career had even got going, it
turned out that the Kon-Rads were not unified
fighters for the cause. Late in 1962, when drummer
Dave Crook left their always fluid line-up, a
putsch in the ranks saw George Underwood booted
out. To this day, the central characters dispute
what happened in their schoolboy band. As far as
George Underwood is concerned, the new
drummer was the villain of the story: He just
didnt like me for some reason. He was trying to
get me out of the band and got one of his friends,
not to beat me up, but to give me some kind of
warning. It was really intimidating, I was almost
crying it was horrible. George, for all his talent,
was simply too nice a gentleman, he explains.
He didnt protest; he even lent them his guitar amp.
Without it, they were fucked. It was an early
lesson in the ruthlessness of the music industry for
Underwood, albeit one he never took to heart.
At first, David was unconcerned by his friends
departure. He was fascinated by the new drummer,

David Hadfield, who already seemed like a pro

compared to the rest of the Kon-Rads. Hadfield
had grown up in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, where
hed teamed up with Harry Webb, later famous as
Britains first home-grown rock n roller Cliff
Richard, at secondary school. Hadfield had hyped
his Cliff credentials in a Drummer Seeks Work
advert placed in Furlongs music shop. David,
along with guitarist Neville Wills, was intrigued,
questioning the drummer closely over coffees at
the Bromley Wimpy. Rhythm guitarist Alan Dodds
joined them for a rehearsal in Nevilles front room
a few days later, and they all agreed that Hadfield
was in. The drummer would become Davids
closest musical confidant for nearly a year;
together, theyd hustle for shows, paint backdrops
and update their set list.
Over the following weeks, Hadfield discovered
the skinny blond-haired sax player, who looked
younger than his fifteen years, was by far the most
ambitious band member. He was very very
boyish, blond, and didnt look his age at all. But he
carried himself well and he just wanted to be

part of show business. You could feel it.

Hadfield was ambitious, too, although hes
adamant that he played no part in the ousting of
George Underwood, and didnt even know that the
Kon-Rads had ever played in public. David would
become his main friend but the sax player was
also, as far as the other Kon-Rads were concerned,
a pain: he didnt understand the way the music
business worked. The Kon-Rads were the first
musicians to encounter Davids restlessness, his
urge to keep pushing relentlessly forward. In the
main, they resisted his pressure, and the results
were a key part of the sax players musical
education, for the Kon-Rads were, in Davids
terms, a failure. They hit the London scene at a
time when the most amazing breaks were available
and they blew every one of them.
Over the end of 1962 and the beginning of 1963,
Jones and Hadfield spent every minute avoiding
their day jobs. David was supposedly studying for
his O-Levels, while Hadfield had recently found a
position as an invoice clerk in Borough, but the
band rehearsed so intensively at Bromleys St

Marys Church Hall that they were hounded out

after complaints about the noise and forced to
move to a damp prefab building down the street.
Soon the Kon-Rads were playing most weekends
in small halls and pubs around south-east London,
including Bromley, Beckenham, Orpington and
Blackheath.
Over their year-long existence, the Kon-Rads
changed line-up continually, with the addition of
bassist Rocky Shahan, and later a singer, Roger
Ferris, while Hadfield brought in girlfriend Stella
Patton and her sister Christine as backing
vocalists. Over that year, the two Davids spent
nearly all their spare time working together. The
younger David was good company, energetic,
enthusiastic and practised incessantly on the
saxophone. His schoolwork languished, but he
became a good sax player, mastering a raunchy
King Curtis-style tone on the Conn tenor to which
hed recently switched, and there was something
about the way he stood, relaxed on stage, that was
effortlessly cool. But his fellow Kon-Rads were
unimpressed by many of Davids ideas for

updating their outfits or their set-list. When

youve got seven people in the band you cant
change things overnight, says Hadfield. Our
attitude was, if we go out on a limb were going to
lose all our local bookings and lose what
popularity we have.
But there was a bigger world out there than
local bookings, a world populated by people like
Joe Meek, who had scored a huge hit that summer
with his space-rock hit Telstar. The pioneering,
gay producer had recorded some of the UKs most
radical early rock n roll hits in a self-built
studio, crammed into a tiny flat above a leather
goods store on the Holloway Road. Meek was an
obsessive; he recorded day after day without a
break, auditioning hundreds of bands, lavishing
each session with sonic adornments. Within a few
weeks of Hadfield joining the Kon-Rads, the band
made their way up to Meeks flat for an audition
session. The producer was already known for
becoming obsessed with some of the young
musicians in his studio, often hassling young, blond
lookers but for the Kon-Rads session he was

uncommunicative and surly, unimpressed by their

best shot, an MOR version of Mockingbird. The
sappy, undistinguished ditty, sung by Roger Ferris,
was later consigned to one of Meeks notorious
tea-chests full of rejected material. David was the
only band member who chatted with the producer
for more than a couple of minutes, quizzing him
about his productions. But their conversation was
cut short when he was called to help carry the
bands gear down to their old Evening News
delivery van, waiting outside. Meek never called
them back, and in their postmortem the band
acknowledged the possibility they werent
original enough. Davids suggestion that they
write their own material was ignored by Hadfield
and Neville Wills, though, who insisted that their
live audience preferred familiar cover songs.
(Perhaps the session was not a total dead loss,
though, for its possible the concept of Telstar
a quirky, otherworldly novelty song based on a
celebrated spaceshot lodged in the young David
Jones mind.)
A second failure was harder to stomach, for this

time it involved one of Davids friends and rivals.

After sending a demo recording to the Rediffusion
TV company, the Kon-Rads won a slot on Ready
Steady Win the talent contest spin-off from the
super-hip music show Ready, Steady, Go!. There
was snickering from the audience and judges
during the heat, as the Kon-Rads, in matching suits,
set up their lavish backdrop, drum riser and lights,
before launching into an impeccably played set of
covers. The winning band, The Trubeats, played
their own songs and gave a stripped-down
performance highlighting their blond, goodlooking, teenage guitarist, Peter Frampton now a
student at Bromley Grammar School who won
over boys and girls alike. The Kon-Rads
performance was mocked in a press report, which
declared that the band has nothing original to
offer.
It was David, the youngest member, still at
school, who always rebounded from such setbacks.
He kept pushing, says Hadfield. He wanted to
write more things, change how we dressed,
[saying] Weve got to go out on a limb. The

older musicians tried to persuade David that he

was being impractical. They were convinced he
was addicted to gimmicks an impression
reinforced when he announced one day that he was
assuming a new name, David Jay. David
persisted in his schemes, persuading Neville to
write the music to his lyrics for several songs,
including I Never Dreamed. The composition
with dark lyrics inspired by newspaper reports of
a train crash, and a poppy tune reminiscent of The
Tremeloes was slotted into their set, alongside
their predictable line-up of Chris Montez,
Shadows and Beatles numbers. And as he started
to influence their material, David also started to
make an impression live. He looked good, he had
a way of standing with his sax slung round his neck
it was very manly, if thats the right word. He
was getting noticed more, guys and girls seemed to
like him.
Two breaks had ended in failure, but then, in the
summer of 1963, it looked like it might be third
time lucky. Bob Knight, a Bromley entrepreneur,
managed to interest his friend Eric Easton in the

band. Easton was the co-manager of The Rolling

Stones who were on the brink of the big-time
and soon the Kon-Rads were hanging out in his
office on Oxford Street, being introduced to Brian
Epstein and finally, via Easton, scoring their big
break: a trial session for Decca, the Stones label,
on 30 August, 1963.
Determined not to repeat their previous
mistakes, the band showcased their own material,
including I Never Dreamed. But their first formal
studio session, complete with engineers in white
coats, was a disaster. Hadfield was a nervous
wreck, the rhythm tracks were a mess and the
results werent even deemed worthy of a playback.
By the time Decca confirmed they werent
interested in the band, David had already
announced he was leaving.
David gave little explanation: There was no
arguing with him. He simply said he wanted to do
his own thing, says Hadfield, who insists that the
young sax player, having deserted the band after
their first setback, was not a band kind of person.
Years later, David explained his defection was

inspired by very different reasons. I wanted to do

a version of [Marvin Gayes] Can I Get a
Witness and they didnt. That was why I left the
Kon-Rads. George Underwood, Davids coconspirator, backs up his version: We were
determined to do music we enjoyed playing not
copying what was in the Top 10.
David had coaxed Underwood to make some
guest appearances with the Kon-Rads earlier that
summer, and the two had spent months sharing their
musical obsessions as they plotted their own band.
By now David spent all of his free time rehearsing,
hanging out at Vic Furlongs, Medhursts,
Bromleys two Wimpy Bars or at Georges house
his voracious appetite for music now bordering
on the obsessive. The two friends enjoyed a
glorious summer, despite the fact that when
Davids O-Level results arrived, it turned out hed
failed every one but art. He seemed blithely
unconcerned; his mother was unsupportive,
dismissive of his music, but Haywood seemed, as
far as friends could tell, to indulge Davids
fantasies. Nonetheless, David finally caved in to

the pressure to get a proper job, and Owen

Frampton used his connections to find him a
position as a runner and paste-up artist at the New
Bond Street office of Nevin D. Hirst, a small
Yorkshire-based ad agency.
The sole nine-to-five job of David Jones life
would enable him, in future years, to pronounce on
the world of design, marketing and manipulation as
a self-styled expert. In his later career hed talk
about how the advertising industry had been the
prime force, alongside rock n roll, in shaping the
latter half of the twentieth century, and the fact hed
worked as an illustrator in advertising became a
key component of his self-image. Yet as he admits,
his involvement with the industry was brief. I
loathed [it]. I had romantic visions of artists
garrets though I didnt fancy starving. [Hirsts]
main product was Ayds slimming biscuits, and I
also remember lots of felt-tip drawings and pasteups of bloody raincoats. And in the evening I
dodged from one dodgy rock band to another.
Although his commitment to the job was faint,
David was lucky to have a hip boss, Ian an

indulgent, Chelsea-booted, crop-haired blues fan

who sent David on errands to the celebrated
Dobells Record Shop, ten minutes walk away on
Charing Cross Road. This was the mother-lode of
hip blues, the place Eric Clapton shopped for
obscure imports which hed then replicate,
astounding audiences who figured hed invented
the riffs hed lifted from Albert King or Buddy
Guy. David embarked on a similar search for
source material; when Ian suggested he pick up
John Lee Hookers Country Blues on Riverside,
he spotted Bob Dylans debut on the racks, too.
Within weeks George and I had changed the name
of our little R&B outfit to The Hooker Brothers,
and included both Hookers Tupelo and Dylans
House of the Rising Sun in our set. The pair
were so carried away with enthusiasm that they
started playing shows as a trio with drummer Viv
Andrews before theyd even got a proper band
together. Billed as The Hooker Brothers, or
Davids Red and Blues (a druggy reference to the
Mods favourite barbiturate pills) they guested
between sets at the Bromel Club, at Bromleys

Royal Court Hotel. Today, as Underwood admits,

the notion of two kids from Bromley reinventing
themselves as Mississippi Bluesmen seems
ludicrous, but it was something we needed to get
out of our system! Davids first compliment from
an experienced musician came from those early
shows, when The Hooker Brothers shared a bill
with jazzman Mike Cotton at the Bromel Club. It
was a brief performance, sandwiched between the
two halves of The Mike Cotton Sounds trad jazzinfluenced set. Well done, the venerable twentysix-year-old congratulated the wannabe bluesmen
after their set, you must be very brave.
Brave they seemed in the autumn of 1963, when
they played several brief shows at the Bromel. Yet
by December, when The Rolling Stones cracked
the Top 20 with I Wanna Be Your Man, a tiny
nucleus of British musicians were about to
refashion British rock n roll. Two bands emerged
in the Stones wake: The Yardbirds, whod taken
over their residence at the Crawdaddy Club in
Richmond, and The Pretty Things, whose Dick
Taylor had played with Keith Richards in an early

incarnation of the Stones. The Pretties were known

around the Bromley scene thanks to Dorothy Bass,
Davids schoolmate (and, briefly, Georges
girlfriend), who owned a car and was therefore
recruited as the Pretties roadie.
With the sense that they were about to catch a
wave, David and George stepped up their efforts
to form a full band. It was David who spotted a
classified ad in Melody Maker from a Fulham
outfit seeking a singer. The trio guitarist Roger
Bluck, bassist Dave Howard and drummer Robert
Allen were, in truth, more in tune with the spirit
of Chet Atkins than Muddy Waters, but Jones and
Underwood both worked on roughen[ing] them
up. Their set was based on songs which countless
Brit blues-boomers would cover: Elmore James
Early One Morning, Howlin Wolfs Spoonful
and Howling for My Baby. The bands name,
The King Bees, came from another blues classic,
Slim Harpos Im a King Bee.
For The King Bees tiny audience perhaps a
couple of dozen local kids they were
torchbearers for a new music. This was a

completely different animal from Sonny Boy

Williamsons blues, says Dorothy Bass, that was
where it came from, this was where it was going.
People like us were taking something old,
forgotten, and used it to create a new sound,
something that spoke to us.
Bass was probably The King Bees closest
follower, hanging out with them at the Wimpy
Bars, coffee shops, parties and gigs. She knew
David well: likeable, cheerful, enthusiastic, but
almost bland and boring in his single-mindedness.
All he wanted to do was practise, and listen to
tapes or records that hed got hold of. That was his
life. Everybody regarded themselves as an expert
in music but he really was. What made him
different was he would pass a party, or anything up
if there was something he needed to do for his
music. For the other kids, that was inconceivable.
For David, the lesson of the Kon-Rads ran deep:
he was convinced that seeking out new, hip music
before the competition was the key to success.
When he and George discovered Bob Dylans
debut album at Dobells, David remembers how,

we added drums to House of the Rising Sun,

thinking wed made some kind of musical
breakthrough. We were gutted when The Animals
released the song to stupendous reaction. The
Animals, of course, had learned their trade playing
night after night at Newcastles Club A-Gogo;
David would never pay his dues in such a
yeomans fashion. For a start, although he, rather
than George, had taken on the role of lead singer,
he was still reticent as a front man. When Dorothy
Bass was roped in to drive The Pretty Things to
their shows in south-east London, David would
often come up and chat to singer Phil May and the
bands founder, Dick Taylor, who says, We did
like him. Skinny little blond fella. Though I dont
think I ever saw him sing.
As a singer, skinny and likeable was about it.
He was very self-contained, says Bass, who saw
most of The King Bees shows. I didnt think he
reached out to the audience very much, maybe he
was concentrating on what he was singing. He
didnt actually seem sexy to me. George was
gorgeous I wouldnt say I dismissed David, he

was blond, he was OK, but I didnt see him as a

sex symbol. There was no interacting or giving
anything to the audience. Not that that bothered us.
They were people on stage, our age, and thats all
that mattered.
On stage, David hadnt mastered the swagger of
contemporaries like Mick Jagger or Phil May. Off
stage, though, he was a natural, a hustler. Aided by
his father, whod now worked in PR for nearly a
decade, he also had an innate understanding of the
fact that a hustler loves another hustler. For this
reason, the letter that helped him score his debut
single became better-known than the single itself.
History would have it that David Bowie grew up
estranged from his parents. Peggy certainly became
irritated by his musical ambitions, and given that
David was firmly attached to the family pursestrings for the next half-decade, her intolerance
would have been shared by most parents.
Haywoods reaction was more complex: he was
conventional, but indulgent. He and David were
more alike than many realised; calm, but both with

a nervous fizziness. The most obvious sign of this

in Haywood was his chain-smoking, which David
soon imitated to the extent of using the same
brand, Players Weights. There was the
conventional generation gap between father and
son yet Haywoods youthful obsession with the
entertainment world had not been entirely
extinguished. So it was Haywood and David who,
in January 1964, concocted a sales pitch for
Davids new band. Shameless and over the top
according to George Underwood, Haywood and
Davids joint sales pitch would kick off Davids
career.
Around Christmas 1963, David had noticed
news headlines generated by John Bloom, an
aggressive entrepreneur whod blazed a famously
fiery trail through Britains white-goods industry,
starting with washing machines, then moving on to
dishwashers and refrigerators. He seemed to have
a financial Midas touch, and father and son typed
out a letter suggesting he put his golden touch to
work in the most up-and-coming industry of all,
pop music. If you can sell my group the way you

sell washing machines, David suggested, youll

be on to a winner.
Before sending the letter, David showed it to
George, who protested. His dad helped him
concoct the letter and it was concocted in that it
said things like that famous quote, Brian Epsteins
got The Beatles and you should have us.
Undeterred, David assured him, dont worry. It
will be all right. His instincts were on the money.
Bloom, amused by the youngsters chutzpah,
passed the letter on to Les Conn, a friend from the
Jewish scene in Stamford Hill. Within a couple of
days, a telegram arrived at Davids house,
instructing him to call Conns Temple Bar number.
It was a lucky happenstance. Invariably
described as a small-time manager, Les Conn was,
in fact, neither small-time, nor a manager. His
connections were impeccable, including Beatles
publisher Dick James, movie star Doris Day, and
emerging music moguls like Mickie Most and Shel
Talmy; he played vital roles in advancing the
careers of The Shadows, Clodagh Rodgers and
The Bachelors. However, to describe him as a

manager would imply some degree of organisation,

or of the ability to oversee someones career
qualities which were noticeable by their absence
in this charming, supremely scatty man.
Musician Bob Solly, who also met Les that
spring, remembers the aspiring mogul proclaiming,
Conns the name, cons the game! before showing
off his credentials in the form of a suitcase full of
parking tickets he was hoping to evade. A short,
slightly pudgy bundle of energy, hed shoot out
rapid-fire yarns and schemes in a cheeky, vaguely
posh voice, often punctuated by sudden pauses as
he searched for the vital document or press cutting
hed been brandishing just a few seconds earlier.
Conn epitomised the charming amateurism of the
British music scene. He had set up Melcher Music
UK for Doris Day before being recruited by
Beatles publisher Dick James as a song plugger.
He was a moderately successful publisher, a
dreadful songwriter, and a genius at spotting talent.
In just a few short months he would take on both
the future David Bowie and the future Marc Bolan,
giving both of them their first career breaks.

Bloom had asked Conn to check out The King

Bees to see to whether it was worth booking them,
cheaply of course, for his upcoming wedding
anniversary party, on 12 February, 1964. Conn
remembers The King Bees playing in his flat.
They were a nice bunch, he remembers. It
wasnt commercial music they played, it was
underground, really. But David had charisma,
George too. And that was enough to get them the
gig.
Their debut, though, was a disaster. Some of
The King Bees blues evangelism started to desert
them when they turned up at the Jack Club for the
party in jeans and suede Robin Hood boots, and
noticed disapproving looks from the moneyed
crowd, which included Sir Isaac Wolfson and
Lord Thomson of Fleet. The King Bees were asked
to follow The Naturals, a well-scrubbed Beatles
cover band with a pristine backline of Vox
amplifiers, which The King Bees plugged into as
they launched into their opening song, Got My
Mojo Workin. Unfortunately, Davids mojo just
didnt work with Bloom, who sidled over to Conn

and yelled, Get them off! Theyre ruining my

party. The King Bees shuffled off the stage to
make way for the highlight of the evening, a duet
between rocker Adam Faith and forces sweetheart
Vera Lynn. David did cry when I told him to leave
the stage, says Conn, but I said to him, Dont
worry, one person was impressed and that was
me.
Conn would become David Bowies first
champion in the music business, and a few weeks
later pulled up in his Jag outside Plaistow Grove
for a meeting with Davids parents, who needed to
co-sign their seventeen-year-old sons management
contract. Peggy, Conn noted, was the chattier of the
two; Haywood was friendly but very serious, a
civil-servant type. Both parents were impressed,
that just a few months into his career, David had
signed with such a self-styled mogul, with
connections to The Beatles, who assured them it
would take him little time to conjure up a record
deal, and that David was on the brink of the big
time.
David, however, showed no surprise at all; he

boasted a bright-eyed teenage confidence that

meant he reacted to every break as if it was his by
right. Years later, hed claim that much of this
apparent confidence was bravado, and that he
suffered from low self-esteem. Some of this seems
to be fashionable therapy speak, for while he was
restrained on stage, when it came to chatting up
girls or greeting a room full of strangers his
confidence was unshakeable. In later years hed
learn to be more subtle, but the seventeen-year-old
David Jones seemed almost ruthless in his selfpromotion. Enthusiastic, receptive, with a
sometimes brilliant deadpan humour, he was also,
say observers like Les Conn, brash. He was sure
he was going to be big. But the charm came later as
he got more success.
Davids attitude was exactly like that of another
aspiring singer, whom Conn met later that year at
Denmark Streets La Gioconda coffee bar: Mark
Feld, who at this point had yet to metamorphose
into Marc Bolan. The two were, says Conn, very
similar. They totally believed in themselves, both
of them. It was me that brought the two of them

together, and they both had exactly the same

attitude, which was, We are going to make it. The
two would practise their far-fetched stories on
each other, both becoming masters of bullshit, as
David fondly recalls: Marc was very much the
Mod, and I was a kind of neo-beat hippie. So
theres me and this Mod, and he goes, Where
dyou get those shoes man? Whered you get your
shirt? We immediately started talking about
clothes and sewing machines: Oh, Im gonna be a
singer and Im gonna be so big youre not gonna
believe it. Oh, right! Well, Ill probably write a
musical for you one day, cos Im gonna be the
greatest writer, ever! No, no, man, you gotta hear
my stuff cos I write great things. And I knew a
wizard in Paris! And [this was when] we were
just whitewashing walls in our managers office!
The pair shared a talent for rabid self-promotion
and an unabashed flirtatiousness, with both men
and women. Davids confidence was always
tempered by his interest in people and how they
ticked; Marc was far more abrasive. Over the next
decade, their careers became intertwined; friends,

like the DJ and scenester Jeff Dexter, described

them as like brothers. Each took pride in, and
was sometimes tortured by jealousy of, the others
achievements. For the time being, their relationship
revolved around trading grandiose fantasies in La
Gioconda, over cups of coffee cadged from Les
Conn.
Over the spring of 1964, Conn used his contacts
to arrange The King Bees first West End gigs,
including the Roundhouse. When it came to sorting
out publishing and record deals he stayed close to
home. Dick James Music looked after the
publishing, while Conn used his freelance A&R
role at Decca to arrange a session at the companys
studios in Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead.
For the A-side, the band were presented with an
acetate of a song by Paul Revere and The Raiders,
Louie Louie Go Home published, naturally, by
Dick James Music. We were simply given the
single and told to learn it, says Underwood,
adding that in the hurried production process the
band soon started to feel like cogs in a machine.
The band were left to arrange their own B-side, for

which David and George reworked the traditional

folk song, Little Liza Jane, modifying the lyrics
and adding a guitar line borrowed from Howlin
Wolfs Smokestack Lightning. It took around
fifteen minutes, sitting in my mums kitchen, says
Underwood, the big influence was Huey Piano
Smiths version.
The recording was brisk, the standard three-hour
session. Underwood was nervous; David was
unflappable: Youd better get used to this! he
told the others, and when it came time for him to
do the singing, with the rest of the band adding
backing vocals, there was not a hint of nerves. He
was very confident. Certain he was going to make
it, says Conn.
Yet it was obvious he wasnt going to make it
with this record.
There have been few recording debuts as
undistinguished as that of David Bowie. Both sides
of the single plodded along in drearily
conventional beatboom fashion: on Liza Jane, the
wonderful energy and sprightliness of Huey

Smiths famous hit was bowdlerised where

Hueys song was simple, The King Bees version
was trite. Davids voice was horribly generic, a
John Lennon wannabe with a phoney London
accent. The single sounded exactly like what it
was: a rushed attempt to cash in on the emerging
blues boom. Conn had to call in all his favours
even to get Decca to release the single, which
came out on their revived Vocalion label. Peter
Stevens, who was in charge of releases, didnt rate
it at all, says Conn, who nonetheless got to work
exploiting all his contacts for radio and jukebox
play and overseeing a press release extolling the,
action-packed disc which features the direct noholds-barred Davie Jones vocal delivery!
Conns press release didnt mention the other
King Bees. It also revealed that the single had been
flipped to make Liza Jane the A-side. When the
band received their copies, they were surprised to
see that the writing credit on Liza Jane was
assigned to Les Conn. Conn remained adamant
that he had written the song, pointing out that, if I
had done that to David, why would he have

continued to work with me? Yet his memories of

the writing were vague, for instance his suggestion
the song title maybe came from a girl David was
going out with. Although today David says he
cant remember anything about how the song was
written, Underwoods story of how Liza Jane
was cooked up in his mums kitchen from a Huey
Smith recipe is the one that rings true. But as
George explains, We didnt want to rock the boat,
and figured if Les wanted a piece of the action, he
could have it. Ironically, Conns manipulation of
the songwriting credits prevented Dick James
Music, which famously owned The Beatles songs,
from securing an option on the future David
Bowies material, too.
June 1964 was the high point of The King Bees
brief existence. David and George spent most of it
hanging out in Bromley: talking music, sipping
coffees, or being bought drinks at Henekeys
winebar on the High Street, while the remaining
King Bees stayed in Fulham. There was a show at
the Justin Hall in West Wickham on 5 June to mark

the records official release date, and parties

throughout the week. Then on Friday 19 June,
David Jones returned with his band to the
Rediffusion studio the scene of his humiliation
with the Kon-Rads to celebrate the sweet victory
of his TV debut, on Ready, Steady, Go!. They
devoured the experience like the teenagers they
were, overawed by The Crickets who woke up
briefly from a jetlag-induced sleep to acknowledge
Georges exclamation that hed witnessed their
1955 show at the Elephant and Castles Trocadero
cinema and by John Lee Hooker, who was in a
nearby dressing room to record another
Rediffusion show. Ive seen him close-up! David
breathlessly informed George. Go and look at
those hands, those fingers! The King Bees
performance passed in a flurry of excitement and
then passed into oblivion.
Over the next few days, David and George
basked in their temporary fame, wearing new
mohair suits and playing more shows. But as they
sat in the Bromley South Wimpy Bar, scouring that
weeks Melody Maker, it became obvious that

Liza Jane was not going to trouble the charts.

For George Underwood the release of Liza
Jane was an achievement in itself. But for David
who had been singing for less than a year, whose
voice was mediocre, and who had yet to write a
song on his own this wasnt good enough. There
had been some talk about David or George joining
other bands even before the single was released,
but George was shocked by the way his old school
friend, one day in July, simply announced: Ive
decided to break the band up and Ive found
another band.
The guitarist was devastated. At the time it was
something like, You bastard! Are you just gonna
leave us in the lurch? Only later did he realise
how David had been sounding out how committed
he was for some months. I was ambitious in my
head but not like he was. Hed decided to throw
everything into it. In later years, hed read about
other ambitious types like Neil Young, recognise
the same brutality with which they would drop an
approach, or a band, that didnt work, and realise
how it made sense. Whats the point of sticking

with it, if its not working? At seventeen, David

was a second-rate singer, but he already boasted
first-class ambition.
For George, being in a band was a passion, one
to be shared with your friends. Discovering David
had an entirely different agenda was a shock. Just
as striking was how unapologetic Georges
bandmate was; Davids selfishness was cheerful,
instinctive, almost child-like in its lack of
malevolence. George was one of the first, but not
the last, to hear what would become a guiding
philosophy: Numero Uno, mate!

3
Thinking About Me
Thered be six girls at the front of the
Marquee and half a dozen of us queens
at the back, watching his every move.
Simon White

London, 1964, has been immortalised in popular

history as swinging, racy; its joyous heart beating
to the throb of Jaguar engines and pill-popping
Mod anthems, buzzing with the illicit thrills of
cheap sex and gangster cool. In reality, this
glorious state of affairs was confined to the tiniest
group of insiders. David Jones was one of them.
That fateful year, David Jones sashayed
confidently into the epicentre of swinging London,
hanging out with the scenes hippest stars,

participating in the shag-tastic promiscuity,

convincing many he had more right to be there than
they did. Within a year, he had become a leading
Face in the scene, distinguished in every respect
bar one: the music.
The nerve with which the seventeen-year-old
engineered his next career move illustrated
perfectly how he worked. It was on 19 July, 1964,
that he walked into the smoke-filled living room of
a suburban semi in Coxheath, Kent, and surprised
its occupants, a six-piece called The Manish Boys,
whod assumed the amazing singer Les Conn had
told them about was David Jones, a black R&B
singer who could give their horn-heavy blues vital
grit and credibility. They were surprised when
accompanied by the fast-talking Conn a blond,
skinny, suede-booted youth walked in through the
sliding picture windows. They were even more
surprised, around a half-hour later, to realise
theyd hired him as their singer.
The Manish Boys worked more closely with
David than any outfit right up to The Spiders from
Mars. It was with them that he first attracted notice

as a singer; it was likewise with them that he

discovered the cornucopia of sexual options
available in a country eagerly unshackling itself
from the prurience and dreariness of the fifties.
Together they crafted a horn-heavy, versatile R&B,
based on one of Davids musical obsessions, the
band Sounds Incorporated, and together they made
Davids first decent record. Their achievements
were all the more surprising, considering that their
first meeting was so sketchy.
After their disappointment at realising that the
skinny white kid was from Bromley, rather than
an American ghetto, The Manish Boys had only the
briefest conversation with him. Les insisted on
playing The King Bees single, which, after the
build-up, was disappointing. But David wasnt,
says keyboardist Bob Solly. He was a good lively
personality, an obvious showman. And he looked
good. The bands leaders, Solly and sax player
Paul Rodriguez, ultimately decided to recruit their
new singer because they liked his clothing and
hilariously appreciated his punctuality. As Solly
points out, His appearance struck us more than

anything. And the fact he was reliable. Ninety per

cent of people who join bands should be working
in a cupboard somewhere on their own because
they have no idea about working with other people.
From that first meeting, David was absolutely
spot-on punctual like he was working in a
theatre. And theatre people, however bizarre they
are, tend to be very, very punctual.
For all his love of anarchic rock n rollers,
David Jones was an old-fashioned trouper, with a
sense of style, and a sense of timing. The new kid
fitted right in to The Manish Boys, for they too
were troupers. They were mostly, like David, only
children, hence more pushy, says Solly, because
we only had ourselves to think about. They were
all filled with a child-like obsession with music,
which for all of them represented an escape from
the austerity of their upbringing.
The band revolved round Solly and Rodriguez,
both three years older than David or Davie, as he
styled himself. John Watson played bass and sang.
Guitarist Johnny Flux joined the band a fortnight
before David, and was another natural-born hustler

who had previously sold newspaper advertising

space (and went on to create kids TV robot Metal
Mickey). Woolf Byrne, on baritone sax, also drove
and maintained the bands rickety Bedford van,
while drummer Mick Whitehead had been
persuaded to walk out of his job as an apprentice
barber.
During that first meeting, the band were
impressed by Davids statement that he was
writing his own numbers, although they thought the
only song he played, Dont Try to Stop Me,
sounded suspiciously like a Marvin Gaye number.
David was upfront about suggesting new material,
most notably from James Browns Live at the
Apollo; The Manish Boys own set soon included
material by Ray Charles (Whatd I Say),
Solomon Burke (Stupidity) and even Conway
Twitty (Make Me Know Your Mind) and in
August they hit the road with their new singer.
A couple of The Manish Boys, including Woolf
Byrne, had initially been unimpressed by the new
recruit. Yet during that autumns shows around the
south of England, to audiences ranging from a

couple of dozen to a couple of hundred, Woolf

began observing something curious: I had thought
that Johnnys voice was better deeper and
growlier. Then we realised, very soon, that when
John sang the kids kept on dancing and behaving
the way they did before. When David sang a
number they stopped to look.
Byrne observed how, bit by bit, Davie started
using the microphone, getting close up to it when
singing in a softer, Dylan-esque drawl, or pulling
back for a James Brown-style squeal. He sang in
an English, rather than a fake American, accent. As
they racked up more shows, Jones delivery
became more powerful occasionally he was so
carried away by the music that hed smash the
maracas he used on Bo Diddley into the mikestand. Eventually, Bob Solly got into the habit of
bringing a small knife with him, to pry out the
maracas little ball-bearings from the keys of his
Vox Continental organ. Then I realised he had
changed us completely, says Woolf. We used to
simply stand on stage and play, that changed, then
the music we played was different, then our dress

became different as well. It was simple enough,

what he did, says Paul Rodriguez, he simply
knew how to grab a microphone and perform.
Those first months with The Manish Boys were
confused, carefree, rarely boring. The band shared
each others clothes, sleeping on friends floors
while cadging off their parents for food, shelter
and cash. Over this summer, David redesigned his
own life. By now hed quit his job at Nevin D.
Hirst, and seemed to base his new image on the
beat novels he was reading. He was the most
nomadic of the group; the others might stay away
from home for a day, he would bum around
friends for a week. This fitted in with his oftenvoiced love of Dylan, Jack Kerouac, or J.
Saunders Reddings On Being Negro in America,
one of many books he picked up in paperback at
Bromley South Station. Throughout their gigs,
practice sessions at Charlie Chesters Casino or a
warren of rooms and brothels on Windmill Street,
or socialising at the Regency Club a hangout for
the Kray Twins The Manish Boys developed an
intense, jokey bond, like soldiers on a gruelling

campaign. Their intimacy extended to the girls

who, that autumn of 1964, were omnipresent
their names and phone numbers written in pink
lipstick all over the bands green Bedford van. At
the end of a show, while his friends packed away
amplifiers and equipment, David was out on the
dancefloor, chatting up his female audience:
getting in there first, as the lingo went.
In many respects The Manish Boys lives were
identical to those of teenagers from the first half of
the century; they had few clothes; each would walk
for miles to see their friends, many of whom didnt
own a phone; chatting with their mums for hours
over endless cups of tea; waiting ages for buses;
eating egg and chips in cheap caffs. But in the
most crucial respect, their lifestyles were
transformed: along with music, sex became the
driving force of their existence. There was a
winning charm and jokiness about Davids
approach, but in his bandmates opinion he became
obsessive in his pursuit of women. Solly cites one
time when David tried to interest him in Sue, a
blonde he was trying to cast off: I tell you Bob,

David assured him earnestly, shes clean as a

whistle! They were open about their sexual
escapades, such as the time David and Johnny
simultaneously shagged two sisters, alongside each
other, in their Gillingham B&B but at times,
Davies friends accused him of being completely
out of control. Driving home one foggy evening, the
band spotted a woman hitching a lift, pulled over
and let her into the van, where David sat next to
her, chatting intensely. A short distance down the
road, Woolf, who was at the wheel, suddenly
shouted out, Eeeuurgh, whats that smell?
Realising the woman was a vagrant, he pulled over
and, mercilessly, insisted their passenger get out.
Davids annoyance at this, the others speculated,
was nothing to do with sympathy for the homeless
woman. Would he have? they asked each other,
before responding in chorus, Yes, he would!
After uniting David with The Manish Boys, Les
Conn had declined to take his managerial cut of the
bands intermittent live earnings, but he still
hustled on their behalf. At the end of September he

secured an audition with Mickie Most, who, in the

wake of The Animals House of the Rising Sun,
was probably the biggest independent producer in
London. After setting up at one of their regular
haunts, the comedian Charlie Chesters casino on
Archer Street, the band ran through a couple of
numbers. As was his habit, Most made his decision
on the spot, asking, Do you want to record for me,
boys? In unison, they shouted, Yes!
There was another meeting with Mickie Most to
talk through their material on the evening before
the recording session at Regent Sound on 6
October, overseen by Deccas Mike Smith. As the
band ran through their three songs, Hello
Stranger, Duke of Earl and Love is Strange,
Davids singing was flawless, but on every take of
Love is Strange, John Watson and Johnny Fluxs
backing vocals were ragged and out-of-sync. As
Smith played back the song, pointing out the
problem, tension mounted and the singers got more
nervous. Except, that is, for David; he was totally
cool and calm, Solly remembers, easing the
tension with deadpan jokes, not for a moment

betraying any concern as they struggled for a

decent take. Their three hours ran out; their big
break had turned to dust. Dont worry, David
assured the others, his confidence apparently
undented. Well get it next time.
This was the most potent sign that the bands
youngest member was mature beyond his years,
as Woolf remembers. He could astutely work out
the politics of a meeting well before his friends.
The most notable example was when The Manish
Boys auditioned at the London Palladium that
winter, hoping for a residency at Hamburgs
legendary Star Club.
The set had gone well, and Bob Solly looked on
as the Star Clubs promoter called David over.
The two exchanged a few words and smiles before
David returned to the stage. What did he say?
Solly asked, eagerly.
Oh, he asked me, Which way do you swing,
Davie, boys or girls? David told him.
So what did you say?
Oh, I told him, Boys, of course!
The story illustrated his growing talent for

hustling a deal, and it came as no surprise when

they heard the audition was a success and they
would be booked into the Star Club the following
summer. The same skills came to the fore when
Woolf and David were nursing a coffee in La
Gioconda the hip wood-panelled coffee bar in
Denmark Street that was a favourite musicians
hangout and a BBC researcher approached them
to ask if their long hair had ever caused them
problems. Both of them fancied a TV appearance
and five-guinea fee, but it was David who came up
with the idea of a League for the Protection of
Animal Filament a support group for oppressed
longhairs that existed entirely in his own
imagination.
That chance meeting with the researcher led to a
ninety-second interview on Tonight with Cliff
Michelmore, broadcast on 12 November, 1964,
which was destined to be one of Davids great TV
appearances because he does such a
consummate, humorous job of selling nothing. The
league that this cool-as-a-cucumber youth was
promoting was a convenient fiction, but everyone

was in on the joke, and any prejudice the viewer

might have felt at such an unashamed self-publicist
was dispelled by Davids self-mocking
complaints: Were all fairly tolerant, but for the
last two years weve had comments like Darlin
and Can I carry your handbag? thrown at us. And
it has to stop!
The Manish Boys other singer, John Watson,
was three years older, with a better voice,
experience, and education, but was completely
invisible in comparison to his upstart colleague.
Although in future years, manager Ken Pitt
schooled David Bowie in how to deal with the
media, this short snippet, now a YouTube classic,
shows Pitt was working with a natural. Where
Davie Jones debut as a singer had been
forgettable at best, his debut as a self-publicist
was unimpeachable.
The TV slot convinced the band they were
headed for the big-time, a conviction reinforced
when Les Conn negotiated a deal with the Arthur
Howes organisation Britains leading promoters
of package tours for a string of dates headlined

by Gene Pitney alongside Gerry and the

Pacemakers, The Kinks and Marianne Faithfull,
opening on 1 December, 1964. It was a cheerily
intimate affair; the artists shared the same bus
which picked them all up one-by-one across
London as they started the tour. Pitney was
avuncular and good-humoured the troupes Alpha
male, which sadly sabotaged Davids efforts to
chat to Marianne Faithfull, who sat alongside Gene
throughout the tour, immune to Davids charm. The
Kinks also kept themselves to themselves hoity
toity recalls Bob Solly and rarely mingled.
David was unoffended, and promptly introduced a
cover of You Really Got Me into The Manish
Boys set.
The tour was a perfect opportunity to trial a new
number, Pity the Fool, picked out as the bands
debut single by Shel Talmy, an American producer
who shared an office building with Howes. A onetime child prodigy whod appeared on NBCs
Quiz Kids programme, Talmy had bullshitted his
way into the UK by claiming to have produced The
Beach Boys, then backed up his bullshit by

producing a string of super-compressed highenergy hits for The Who and The Kinks. Shel was
intrigued by the band and their singer: Les Conn
told me I should listen to this guy and Les was
right, he always had a great ear for talent.
Pity the Fool was perfect for The Manish
Boys dense, horn-heavy sound although copying
the grizzled vocal on the original acetate, by
Memphis bluesman Bobby Bland, was an
intimidating task for a Bromley teenager. The
afternoon before the session the pressure on
guitarist Johnny Flux was ratcheted up, too, when
the band bumped into Jimmy Page fast emerging
as Londons leading session guitarist at the 2is
coffee bar, and Page mentioned he was playing
guitar on the session, and would be bringing his
brand-new fuzzbox with him.
For all their bullishness, The Manish Boys were
nervous during the session at Londons IBC studio,
on 15 January, 1965. But David was certainly not
intimidated, says Talmy, that was what I liked
about him. In fact, Davids singing was
transformed, compared to his forgettable debut.

Confident, impassioned, with perfect microphone

technique, the vocals demonstrate a man who, like
Shel Talmy, bullshitted his way into a job and
then delivered.
Clunky, naive, and all the better for it, the song
became an unsung classic of British blues, a fact
spotted right away by Jimmy Page. Good session,
he complimented the band as he packed away his
Fender Telecaster, but I dont think its a hit. He
softened the blow by donating a riff hed played
while warming up, telling David he was welcome
to use it in one of his own songs (it turned up years
later, as The Supermen). David was already
telling people about his work as a songwriter,
although on the evidence of Take My Tip, the Bside of their single, he didnt have much of a
future. Set to a clunky, clichd chord sequence,
distinguished only by intricate lyrics, the song was
an undistinguished pastiche of Georgie Fame, one
of the bands current obsessions.
The run-up to the release of Pity the Fool on 5
March was filled with more live dates, and more
plotting by the irrepressible Les Conn, who hyped

the single with his usual brio, once more stoking up

the furore over long hair that had kicked off in
November. Conn had persuaded an old friend,
BBC producer Barry Langford, to feature The
Manish Boys on the show Gadzooks, but publicly
floated the fiction that the BBC had refused to
allow the band into the studio until the singer cut
his flowing blond locks. I had big placards made,
Lets be fair to long hair, remembers Les Conn,
gleefully, and we said wed parade around the
BBC building until they relented! The artificial
controversy which itself was based, shamelessly,
on similar media shenanigans arranged for The
Pretty Things and The Rolling Stones helped
David win press in the London Evening Standard,
Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror.
Despite the bogus controversy, the record
disappeared into oblivion. The Manish Boys
hoped that Pity the Fool would catapult them into
the big time; instead, their live dates began to dry
up, and the Star Club dates fell through, leaving a
huge gap in their schedule. There were arguments
about billing; David, who invariably had the

shows around Bromley advertised as Davie Jones

and The Manish Boys, expected the single to be
released under the same banner. Solly maintains it
was a shortage of cash, rather than arguments about
the name, that dealt the death blow; the bands van,
their most vital asset, broke down and Woolf had
already left before the bands split was finally
announced in the Kent Messenger in April. We
were dragging it out, says Solly, but wed all had
enough.
The slow death of The Manish Boys was made
more painful for David by the runaway success of
his friend George Underwood. Les Conn had
continued hustling for George, whom he
considered just as talented as David. And really,
he was a much nicer guy, he didnt have that Im
the cats whiskers [mentality]. Les had taken
both George and David to see Mickie Most, and it
turned out that Mickie simply liked George
better. Most treated Underwood almost like a son,
driving him around town in his Rolls Royce,
advising him on life, money and the music
business, before deciding he needed a more

glamorous name. Underwood was therefore given

the nom de rock of Calvin James, after Mickies
son Calvin, and was treated like a star every time
he dropped into the offices of Mosts record label,
RAK. David did not seem to take his friends
success well. Every time they bumped into each
other on Bromley High Street, George felt David
looking at him like daggers.
The last few Manish Boys shows were riotous:
at Cromer on 13 March, David and Johnny Flux,
whod started camping it up together more and
more after their Gillingham escapade, were banned
from the venue. Their final show was at Bletchley,
on 24 April, and the band returned to Maidstone on
their own, without David, who had disappeared
with a female fan who hosted a party in the town.
There were no formal goodbyes: the next time
Solly and Rodriguez saw David was in Shel
Talmys office building, obviously planning
something new. And this time, there would be no
doubt about whose name would get top billing.
The Lower Third had formed in 1964 in Margate, a

bustling Regency resort on the coast of Kent, then a

lively holiday destination with its tea dances,
donkey rides and old-fashioned sideshows
complete with a headless lady. After propping up
the bills at a variety of local shows, guitarist Denis
Taylor, drummer Les Mighall and bassist Graham
Rivens decided it was time to turn professional.
Leaving pianist Terry Boulton and guitarist Robin
Wyatt behind, they decided to head for the bright
lights, packed up supplies of food and toilet rolls
in their converted ambulance, and rented a flat in
Pimlico, central London.
The three had been hanging out around Denmark
Street for only a week or so when they had their
first sight of the young David Jones in La
Gioconda. Blimey, I thought, says Denis Taylor,
there goes Keith Relf of The Yardbirds! The
band had put out word they needed a singer and
arranged auditions at La Discotheque on Wardour
Street, a regular haunt where theyd played as a
five piece. But the funny thing was, he came along
with an alto sax, so we thought he was a
saxophonist.

David had brought along moral support in the

form of singer Stevie Marriott, whom David had
first met at a Manish Boys rehearsal earlier that
year. A jam session followed, based around a
funky version of Little Richards Rip it Up.
Steve was great, remembers Taylor, probably a
better singer than David.
Then, puzzlingly, Stevie left and David took the
microphone, sounding exactly like Keith Relf on
their version of The Yardbirds I Wish You
Would. Soon hed convinced The Lower Third of
his impeccable connections. He told us a few
tricks of the trade I got the impression that Shel
had taught him a lot. And he looked amazing. So
we decided to get him in.
The meeting took place just as The Manish Boys
were falling apart, depressed at their failure. There
was no hint of this in Davids demeanour in fact,
his confidence had increased. In both The King
Bees and The Manish Boys, Davie Jones had
shared the singing and the leadership of the band.
With The Lower Third, the eighteen-year-old took
creative control, pushing Taylor, who was three

years older, to learn new songs as well as assisting

with Davids own compositions. Their cranked-up
version of I Wish You Would became a
cornerstone of their live set; David aped Keith
Relfs vocal style perfectly hed started playing
the harmonica, too, for an even better carbon copy.
Other obvious influences were The Kinks, whose
All Day and All of the Night was also pressed
into service, and The Who. In his first few months
with The Lower Third, David saw them several
times and pressured Taylor to adopt a similar
bombastic guitar sound. That was a learning
curve, that was, Taylor shudders today.
True to form, David had already penned a press
release within a few weeks of joining the band,
detailing how the new group, Davie Jones and The
Lower Third, featured TEA-CUP on lead,
DEATH on bass and LES on drums. The one-page
document reminded its readers of the legendary
Banned Hair tale, and promised another
appearance on Gadzooks, plus a new single, Born
of the Night, which was destined to rush up the
charts. (The song was a demo, cobbled together at

a friends rehearsal space, and was never

released.)
Now that hed taken over leadership of a band,
David seemed liberated; there was an
irrepressible energy about the way hed throw
himself into a project. Just eight or ten weeks after
securing his first songwriting credit with Take My
Tip, Davie was already describing himself as a
songwriter, dropping in at Shels studio to demo
material, and submitting songs to other performers.
Hed had his first song covered thanks to Les
Conn, whod arranged a Kenny Miller recording of
Take My Tip in February. Most of those early
songs were dreadful, but he kept submitting them;
stylistically they veered from Dylan imitations to
Gene Pitney knock-offs. Talmy noticed David,
sounded like lots of different people at different
times and that a lot of the material was not great
still, there was something about David that he
liked; like many, he was attracted by Davids
energy, the way he kept coming up with ideas.
Whereas George Underwood would get depressed
by setbacks, David seemed untouched by them; the

fleeting taste of success hed enjoyed so far simply

fed his appetite for more. Today, he points out how
such setbacks never, ever made him feel
pessimistic, because I still liked the process. I
liked writing and recording it was a lot of fun for
a kid. I might have had moments of, God, I dont
think anything is ever going to happen for me. But
I would bounce up pretty fast.
As David spent more time in the West End
around Denmark St, he started to hang out at the
FD&H publishing house and record shop on
Charing Cross Road, strumming on guitars or
chatting with shop manager Wayne Bardell, and the
two became friends. Bardell had accompanied
David to the first Manish Boys recording date, and,
like so many others, he noticed David was very
confident, without being arrogant this was not a
person who got stressed. He watched David
progress from being a part of the band with The
Manish Boys, to being the leader of The Lower
Third. Then one day, as David came in to the shop,
and sat down behind the counter, he made a very
curious remark. It was, you know, Wayne?

When Im famous Im not gonna speak to anybody

not even the band. It was a strange thing to say
it stuck in my head. Only then did he reflect how
David was always friendly. But I suppose he was
never really giving much away.
A few weeks after David teamed up with The
Lower Third, drummer Les Mighall went back to
Margate for the weekend and never returned.
David located a new drummer, Phil Lancaster,
who helped complete the bands transformation
into a cranked-up, super-violent style heavily
influenced by The Who, a sound honed during the
bands busy summer, spent gigging in Margate and
other south-east resorts.
It was a blissful period for the band and David,
working on songs and hanging out together in
their London flat, at Plaistow Grove or in Margate.
David seemed a natural band member: up for a
laugh, knowing when to take the piss and when to
snap into focus. And on the side, David and Denis
worked on commercials for Youthquake Clothing
and Puritan, both cooked up and recorded in their
Who-influenced style at RG Jones Studio in

Wimbledon, where David made most of his demos

through 1966.
In retrospect, its slightly bizarre that Talmy,
whod helped define the sound of The Who and
The Kinks, should have produced an unashamed
pastiche of his own work, in the form of Youve
Got a Habit of Leaving Me, Davids next single.
The song spliced My Generations two-chord
trick with Tired of Waiting for Yous languid
melody. Worse still, David had abandoned the
vocal distinctiveness he was reaching for on Pity
the Fool. Only in the final seconds does the single
take off, as Denis Taylor smashes into a heavy,
rolling three-chord sequence and the rest of the
band freak out. But those final moments, too, are a
rip-off, copied almost note-for-note from The
Whos Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.
The single, according to legend, featured Les
Conns singing on its flip, the Hermans Hermits
pastiche, Baby Loves That Way. In fact, says
Conn, he didnt attend the session nor did the
single benefit from his consummate schmoozing
skills, and it promptly disappeared without trace.

By now, Les was disenchanted with the music

business; hed subsidised David and Mark Feld for
months, his only payback the time the two of them
painted his office in a shitty green colour, he
recalls. And it didnt look very good. Les had
also helped Mark score a singles deal with Decca
for The Wizard that November. It met with as
little success as Davids efforts: I was going
broke looking after them. And I was getting very
depressed with the music business so I had to say
goodbye.
With by now familiar resourcefulness, David
had a replacement in mind, another regular at La
Gioconda, named Ralph Horton. Horton became a
crucial figure over the next year. There was never
any doubt about his commitment. He would have
done anything to further Davids career, says John
Hutchinson, who worked with him, so he could
have made a good manager. Yet Hortons time
with David was dominated by troubles with money
and disputes with Davids musicians who, like
Denis Taylor, didnt like Ralph from the start.
Bassist Graham Rivens is even more vehement: I

hated him. It wasnt just the fact he was a fuckin

poofta I hated everything about him.
Ralph Horton was in his late twenties, but the
slightly pudgy, invariably stressed-out manager
seemed older, despite the black leather gloves he
usually wore a rock n roll affectation
combined with dark suit, dark shirt and blackframed Buddy Holly specs. Horton had grown up
in Handsworth, just outside Birmingham, where his
family ran a butchers shop. By 1964, hed built up
The Ralph John Agency with John Singer, booking
out local acts including The Tuxedos and Denny
Laine, then with The Diplomats. When Denny
Laine and the Moody Blues moved to London,
Horton came with them, and by 1965 he was
working as a booking agent at The Kings Agency at
7, Denmark Street, next door to La Gioconda.
Horton appeared on the scene just as Davids
progress had hit another road bump, when EMI
pressurised Shel Talmy, who had enough on his
plate with The Kinks and The Who, to terminate
Davids singles deal. David was good, but not
great, says the producer. He was going to get

better, but wasnt in the same league as Pete

Townshend and Ray Davies. And EMI simply felt
the market wasnt buying it. The split was
amicable. David seemed unconcerned, for Horton
assured him he could drum up another deal; even
so, the aspiring manager did sense his own
limitations, for on 15 September Horton called a
well-known publicist named Ken Pitt to discuss
involving him in Davids management. Pitt
explained he was too busy to take on another
client; he also suggested that Davie Jones name
was a problem he already knew of the David
Jones who would go on to join the Monkees, as
well as the south London war poet and painter of
the same name.
Horton would not give up on Pitt and continued
to call him. He also took Pitts reservations about
Davids name seriously. It turned out David
already had an alternative in mind. He had already
tried out different names for size, including his
nom de saxophone, David Jay. During his KonRads period he had seen the movie The Alamo, and
become obsessed with the character played by

Richard Widmark: Jim Bowie. He called himself

Bowie at least once in the dressing room, says
Kon-Rads drummer David Hadfield, and started
dressing in this tasselled leather jacket. The day
after their initial telephone conversation, Horton
wrote to Pitt, telling him his protg would
henceforth be known as David Bowie. All those
involved were enthusiastic about the new name,
although it would, of course, generate arguments in
playgrounds and sixth-form common rooms over
its pronunciation over the next decade. David
always pronounced the name to rhyme with Snowy,
TinTins faithful terrier, although many Northern
colleagues pronounced it Bow to rhyme with
plough.
The new name epitomised Davids fantasies of
glamour and stardom, and also helped consign his
earlier, failed single to history. Mark Feld, who
recorded his debut single at Decca Studio 2,
followed his example. By the time The Wizard
was released on 19 November, Mark had
christened himself Marc Bolan and concocted,
with Les Conns encouragement, an engagingly

ludicrous press release about a wizard-inspired

trip to Paris. Friends and rivals, David and Marc
kept close tabs on each others progress.
Throughout the summer and autumn, Horton put
his contacts to good use, booking repeat
appearances at the Marquee and the 100 Club, a
run of shows in Bournemouth, where the band was
already building a following, and the Isle Of
Wight. The shows saw the band at their peak.
Brilliant, says Taylor. They were really good,
says musician John Hutchinson, a proper band.
David and The Lower Third shared bills with The
Pretty Things, Gene Vincent and The Who (whose
Pete Townshend remarked to David and the band,
Shit, was that one of my songs you just played?).
The Lower Third often drew a better response than
their guest stars, and built up a rapport with most
of them, sailing out on the Isle Of Wight ferry
every week, sharing a tiny caravan and hanging out
on the beach. Hortons contacts with the Marquee
helped score them a string of shows on Saturday
mornings at the club, playing live in support to
guest artists like The Kinks or Stevie Wonder, who

would mime to their own records, which were then

broadcast on Radio London complete with
audience applause. The optimistic mood
brightened further with a trip to Paris in November
for dates at the Club Drouot.
Between shows, David worked on songs, often
with the whole band crammed into his bedroom at
Plaistow Grove. Today, David voices the
insecurities that he would never admit back then: I
didnt know how to write a song I wasnt
particularly good at it. I had no natural talents
whatsoever and the only way I could learn was
to see how other people did it. I wasnt one of
those people who came dancing out of the womb
like Marc I was stumbling around, he says. But
he was persistent, struggling to build a basic
musical vocabulary, humming lines and tunes that
Denis Taylor had to interpret, varying the chords
until they found one that David liked. It was slow
work, like feeling their way through a maze in the
dark. David wanted the music done straight away
but he was very patient, too, says Taylor, and
this would go on for days. On Youve Got a

Habit of Leaving Me, David had simply told

Denis to move his hand up and down the fretboard.
Now they added new tricks, ninths, sevenths and
minor chords, which brought a new complexity to
Davids material. Some of it was morbid. Quite
miserable, says Taylor. During these extended
writing sessions throughout the end of 1965, David
worked on The London Boys, a vignette of pillpopping boys dressed in their finery that was
obviously influenced by the wistful feel of Ray
Davies songs like See My Friends.
A little clunky in places which only adds to its
charm The London Boys was an anthem for a
new generation of kids, an obvious ancestor of
Bowie epics like Lady Stardust and All the
Young Dudes: a celebration of otherness, right
down to the clothing, the hint of homo-eroticism,
and the evocation of Judy Garland in its too late
now, cos youre on the run climax. Its
combination of world-weariness and naivet
embodies the persona that David would inhabit for
a decade or more; a man-child, someone who as a
youth was strangely calm and mature, and who as

an adult seemed waif-like, with a childish

earnestness. In future years, David Bowies
androgyny would be widely and justifiably
celebrated, but this man-child aura was just as
important a part of his personal, often devastating
charm.
The London Boys was a harbinger of another
typical Bowie technique: to hitch a ride on a youth
movement, and simultaneously to distance himself
from it. In the Mod scene, as in others, David was
a late-comer, trailing behind pioneers like Marc
Bolan, whod made his mark early in a seven-page
feature in Town magazine back in September 1962,
shot by celebrated war photographer Don
McCullin. Late he may have been, but David was
instantly accepted by Mod pioneers like Jeff
Dexter, the DJ and leading Face whod been
comparing lapels and partings with Marc Bolan for
years. I checked out David at the Bromel Club in
1964; he was sharp. Marc and Davids obsession
with clothes cemented their relationship; together,
they ventured down Carnaby Street looking for
reject garments in the bins outside the stores.

More significantly, for just a few weeks, David

joined forces with the band who would become the
leading lights of the Mod movement. In the days
following his Lower Third audition, David had
also continued hanging out with Steve Marriott at
La Gioconda and then, when Marriott teamed up
with the future Small Faces, David sat in on their
rehearsals and helped them hump their gear
around. For the first couple of shows he guested on
vocals. He was great, says drummer Kenney
Jones. He was absolutely one of us. A wonderful
Mod, with a great hairdo, a great personality and a
great look really cared about his image. Over
this period, David became the fifth Small Face.
Yet he would never mention this intriguing
collaboration with the Small Faces because it
foundered thanks to the drawback that had plagued
most of his efforts, namely his shameless imitation
of others styles. We were not into protest songs,
says Jones, and David was. In the end, we
decided he was too Dylanish.
The bands rejection was presumably a crushing
blow, for he would never mention it to any of his

confidants. To this day, says Jones, who of course

went on to play with both the Faces and The Who,
I still think about David, personally, and hang on
to those memories of our misspent youth. Although
David never publicised his involvement with the
Small Faces, he remained respectful of Stevie
Marriott who, propelled by his glorious voice and
his songwriting partnership with bassist Ronnie
Lane, would soon achieve the fame for which
David yearned.
Despite such setbacks, Bowies brief career as
a Mod was crucial, for the youth movement
established all the essential principles with which
he outraged Britain in 1972. In most respects,
seventies glam was modernism pushed to the max,
and its no coincidence that the founding troika of
glam Bowie, Bolan and Bryan Ferry were all
definitive Mods. (The only difference in
philosophy was that the Mod ideal was exclusive,
aimed only at peers, whereas glam was designed
to be publicised knowingly pimped, with an
ironic giggle.) In 1964, the notion of preening,
peacock males, who bonded with fellow males

over a side-vent or suit lining, oblivious to the

scorn of outsiders, was outrageous and powerful
in the monochrome backdrop where simply
wearing a pink shirt was a provocative statement.
There were no famous role models you could point
to, to deflect the scorn of the un-hip; apart from
your peers, you were on your own. Mod was the
domain of the unashamed narcissist; and David
Bowie and Marc Bolan became two of the most
committed narcissists in London.
There was an obvious gay frisson about Mod,
and indeed The London Boys. The citys Mod
and gay crowds shared the same clubs and many
values. Le Duce on DArblay Street was nominally
gay, whereas The Scene, in nearby Ham Yard, was
nominally Mod, but you could pose or dance to
Bluebeat in either one. Plenty of Mod boys
experimented with their sexuality, as well as their
clothing, around Soho in 1964 and 1965 it was
no surprise to anyone that David was one of them.
Mike Berry was one of many kids whod
somehow fallen into a dream job, working for the
publishers, Sparta Music. History has never

recorded how this man signed David to his first

significant publishing deal, but Mike met him
through their mutual music-shop friend, Wayne
Bardell, and used to drop in on David when he
was earning odd pennies at the publishers Southern
Music over the winter, packing up manuscripts to
send out to arrangers. They went out for a drink,
and I fell in love with the boy, in more ways than
one.
For Berry, as for David, this was an electrifying
period. Life seemed black and white until 1964.
Then it suddenly burst into colour. Like many of
his generation, the rebellion against monochrome,
strait-laced values included his sex life, too. They
were incredible times, he says. I knew I was
bisexual, I had a girlfriend and fancied other
people then we all suddenly thought, Nobody
cares! Anything goes!
David and Mikes friendship had a sexual
element but any such fumblings were brief, he says,
Mostly, wed talk about things. At the time he was
semi-straight, and semi-gay, we talked mainly
about music, or politics, what was happening with

the Cuban crisis none of us were sure wed be

alive the next year. Or wed talk about, Do we
fancy him or her, whos had who, and of course
nobody knew who was telling the truth.
David was cool, playful, funny, and there was
something waif-like about him. And of course
those eyes struck you straight away, they were
unforgettable. Davids good looks helped him
pass easily in and out of the gay-oriented scene
he flaunted his campness, but it was nonetheless all
a bit of a laugh. In fact, the campness helped him to
attract more girls. In the main, he was voraciously
heterosexual; occasionally hed go on dates with
Dana Gillespie, a sixteen-year-old former public
schoolgirl with an unforgettable cleavage, whom
hed met in The Manish Boys final days;
sometimes Dana would bring along her friend
Sarah Troupe for a double date. David had also
been briefly involved with Annie Howes, the
promoters daughter, but it seemed to his friends
that he had a girl in every port, as Denis Taylor
puts it. Wherever we were, some bird would pop
up.

Still, in mid-sixties Soho, a certain rough-trade

appeal was great for the career. This certainly
applied to Marc Bolan who, according to his onetime manager Simon Napier-Bell, had no great
hang-ups about who to sleep with. By late 1965,
David was beginning to build up his own
following in the West Ends gay musicbusiness
clique, particularly around the Marquee Club
where, says employee Simon White, Thered be
six girls at the front, and half a dozen of us queens
at the back, with Ralph [Horton] hanging on his
every move.
Many of Ralph Hortons connections revolved
around the Marquee and Radio London; both
places with a strong gay contingent, all of whom
loved speculating about Davids relationship with
Horton. In a characteristically outrageous
anecdote, Simon Napier-Bell claimed on his
website in 2006 that Horton had offered him
Davids sexual favours to sweeten a comanagement deal. Whatever Horton may have
promised, Davids confidants, like Mike Berry,
insist, It would never have happened in a million

years. David was always in control of what he

wanted.
Painted by history as a cynical exploiter, Ralph
Horton was he died in 2009 in fact a nice,
gentle person, who was completely out of his
depth, says Terry King, who gave Horton his first
London job, and in turn fired him. Rather than
exploiting David, Horton was simply besotted with
him and revelled in displaying his handsome client
at clubs around town. Hortons obsession,
however, meant that the first months of 1966 were
dominated by back-biting and dubious financial
dealings, for his jealousy and possessiveness
inspired a seemingly irrational campaign to
separate David from his closest friends, namely
The Lower Third.
For Taylor, David Bowies main musical foil in
the group, Hortons influence was negative, right
from the start. We had good laughs together when
we were a group. David was great fun, one of the
lads. And we had hard times, too, the van breaking
down, but he didnt mind he mucked in. After
Horton took over, David started to spend less time

in the bands converted ambulance, in favour of a

cushier, more upholstered existence. And so he
got himself a nice lazy little job of pissing off with
Ralph in his Jaguar Mark X, says Taylor. It was
very disappointing.
Worse still was the air of sleaziness around
Hortons financial affairs, typified by a deal he
made in November 1965 with a London
businessman, Ray Cook, to borrow 1500 a sum
worth roughly 30,000 in todays currency. A
vague contract promised return of the money once
David was earning over 100 a week. Ken Pitt,
who as Bowies next manager had to unravel these
financial tangles, is not alone in believing Cook
had been taken for a ride. I felt sorry for him. It
was not a good situation.
Hortons one coup was to secure a new
recording contract through Tony Hatch, whom hed
originally met via Denny Laine. The house
producer for the Pye label, Hatch later became one
of the best-known producers in the UK the Simon
Cowell of the seventies thanks to his role on the
New Faces talent show. He thought Horton was

pleasant enough, but I recognised he wasnt top

echelon he was still in the junior league. And I
suspected if David had a hit, there would be a new
manager along soon.
Hatch was impressed by David, though
primarily because he wrote his own songs. Pye
was a strange agglomeration spliced together
from the Polygon and Nixa labels which Hatch
had joined as part-time producer, arranging A&R
meetings in the afternoon so he could fulfil his
National Service as arranger for the Coldstream
Guards (another Pye act) in the mornings. His
workload was immense, so the fact he didnt have
to find material for David was crucial. The one
thing that struck me is he had a lot of songs
different songs. Hatch went to see The Lower
Third at the Marquee to check out the material. I
remember The London Boys there were a lot
of songs about his background. There was one
about the Hackney Marshes which is probably in
some archive somewhere. (Sadly, Davids
unreleased Pye material seems to have
disappeared.)

With Hatchs numerous distractions, it took

some time to tie up a recording contract; the
publishing stayed close to home, with Mike Berry
signing him to Sparta for his planned singles. The
deal brought in a small advance, and together with
the money from Raymond Cook, the cash flow
enabled a season of high living at Hortons
Warwick Square flat, with lavish drinking parties.
David acquired a guitar during this high-living
period, and although his playing was, at best,
rudimentary, he worked up songs like Its Lovely
to Talk to You and Maid of Bond Street. In the
autumn The Lower Third demoed The London
Boys, which they considered a standout song, but
Hatch and his Pye colleagues turned it down at
their weekly sales meeting. According to Hatch the
main reason was not the downbeat subject matter,
or references to pill popping, It takes too long to
get going. It would never make a single.
Its replacement was far more concise, with a
simple three-chord chorus once again lifted
shamelessly from Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere.
But while Cant Help Thinking About Me thieved

exactly the same three-chord trick as Youve Got

a Habit of Leaving Me, it makes far better use of
it, with that punchy chorus allied to a subtle verse
whose minor-key chords perfectly match the
foreboding lines of a question time that says I
brought dishonour.
The verse alone was a huge leap forward in
Davids work, but it was combined with another
sophisticated technique, a pre-chorus section that
raises the excitement level (its too late now)
before we reach the release of the chorus. This
was a song as story, one musical vignette giving
way to another, in a technique that became a
cornerstone of David Bowies great songs.
The lyrics, too, are subtle, with hints of a crime
that had blackened the family name, and a chorus
that slightly subverts expectations, for according to
pop convention, the protagonist should have been
thinking about a you, not me. In many cases its
simplistic to assume David is the subject of his
own lyrics, but here, the accusation of blackening
the family name echoes some of Peggys
complaints. Shed been hospitable to The Manish

Boys, nice well-spoken middle-class lads, but by

now she had lost patience with Davids musical
ambitions and demonstrated a sneering suspicion
of his mates from Margate. She didnt like us at
all, says Denis Taylor, ruefully. I remember her
telling me, Youre leading my boy astray he
was never like this before.
Hatch realised the songs virtues instantly it
was a standout and played piano for the session
at Pyes Marble Arch Studio on 10 December,
1965. Although Hatch had reservations about the
performance, for Graham Rivens bass part speeds
up noticeably halfway through, The Lower Third
clatter along with lan, driven by a neat twelvestring acoustic and superb singing. The David
Bowie we know and love croons darkly, before
losing all restraint in the impossibly thrilling runup to the chorus. The single betrays some
influences notably Pete Townshends The Kids
are Alright, as well as that chorus chord sequence
but transcends them thanks to its innate drama, as
the singer, song and band carry the listener along in
their headlong rush.

The single was released on 14 January, 1966, a

week after David had turned nineteen. Ralph
Horton had borrowed more money from Raymond
Cook for a launch party and to help buy the single
into the charts. There was a party that evening at
the Gaiety Bar in Strathearn Place to celebrate the
release: the band walked through the nearby Hyde
Park to get there, while David took a ride in
Ralphs Jaguar, and all the musicians dressed up
and mingled with the Pye staff and celebrities the
most famous was Freddie Lennon, John Lennons
incorrigible absentee father, who was enjoying a
brief flurry of notoriety. It was a really weird
party, says Taylor. Freddie Lennon, this peculiar
old geezer, a bit inebriated, wandering around
saying Do you know who I am?
David was effervescent that night, friendly with
The Lower Third like we were a proper band
meeting and greeting the minor industry figures and
mouthing to his band, This is it! Rail-thin, his
hair in a Mod bouffant, he loved being at the centre
of the hubbub, taking off to charm one huddle of
guests after another, flirting with the Pye

secretaries, and adopting an obliging, likely-lad

persona with the companys suited execs. He had
turned nineteen a week before, had made his first
great single and was in no doubt that, finally, this
was it.

4
Laughing Gnome
I had a minor obsession about David. I
just thought he was the most magical
person. I think I would have signed him
even if he didnt have such obvious
talent.
Hugh Mendl

For a tiny gaggle of fans, men and girls centred

around Soho David Bowie was a star. At home
in Plaistow Grove, he was anything but. Although
he disappeared often to Ralph Hortons basement
apartment at 79, Warwick Square, he was still
reliant on Haywood and Peggy for handouts.
Haywood sometimes intimidated Davids fellow
musicians, but they were often surprised to

discover that behind his strait-laced exterior, he

was surprisingly well informed about Davids
career and supportive. With Peggy it was a
different matter; by the end of 1965, her tolerance
of Davids musical ambitions was exhausted. Yet
although his band used to joke about how they
were forced to wait outside Davids house in their
converted ambulance while he chatted to his mum,
he seemed unconcerned, and would never mention
a word of any family hassle.
After the huge build-up for Cant Help Thinking
About Me, its performance was underwhelming;
the single entirely missed the UKs main chart, the
Record Retailer Top 40. Although Radio London
pushed the single heavily, and placed it at number
twenty-five, it was probably Raymond Cooks
money that helped grease the songs path to number
thirty-four in the Melody Maker chart. Tony Hatch
remembers even this modest success was enough
to make David very excited, and the producer
was mildly encouraged. I did see David as a longterm artist. And I knew we had a lot more material
to play with.

Yet a slightly dodgy Top 40 placing did not help

generate live shows, the only reliable means of
raising cash, and while Ralph Horton was not good
at wheeler-dealing for money too wimpish
according to flatmate Kenny Bell he was good at
spending it. It was Bell whod first sub-let a room
to Horton in the Warwick Square flat, previously
home to The Moody Blues, and during the end of
1965 and beginning of 1966, he saw Horton
spending like a big shot. Cars, booze, you name it.
I dont know how much money Ralph got from
Raymond Cook, but he certainly fancied himself as
a big spender.
Much of Hortons spending was designed to
impress David, who was learning, says Bell, to
dominate Ralph. Really, Ralph was a bit of a
wuss, and I think David ended up controlling him.
Unable to control his own spending, or his
protg, Ralph decided to pick on people he could
control namely The Lower Third. Even before
Cant Help Thinking About Me had been
released, Horton was planning the removal of
Denis Taylor. He decided to pick on one of us to

bring us to heel and he didnt like me, says

Taylor. He wanted to get rid of me and the other
two could stay.
The band started to suspect Horton of trying to
drive a wedge between them when Horton took
David home in his Jag after another run of Paris
Drouot shows over the New Year, leaving The
Lower Third to struggle back in their old
ambulance. During a short layoff in January, the
bands income dwindled to nothing. As a short run
of shows approached, Taylor asked when they
could expect to be paid. Thats when Ralph made
his big mistake, says Taylor. He told us we were
not getting any money, as it was all going into
advertising.
Although Hortons hostility was focused mainly
on Taylor, the managers confrontational attitude
succeeded in uniting all of The Lower Third.
Following a show in Stevenage on 28 January,
1966, the band asked for their share of the take.
Horton informed them there was none. He told us
it had gone on expenses, says Rivens. Like
running his Mark X Jag, I guess.

After a Marquee show the next morning, The

Lower Third were booked in at the Bromel Club,
Davids home venue. The band met Ralph at the
club, and Taylor told him it was No Pay, No Play.
This time, Horton told Taylor, You are definitely
sacked! at which point Phil Lancaster weighed in:
If he goes, we go! To break the stand-off, Taylor
informed the manager, You can have half an hour
to think about it. When we come back, tell us what
you want to do.
After downing a half-pint of lager in a nearby
pub, The Lower Third returned. We were
convinced he was going to pay us, says Rivens,
but he wouldnt. So we simply packed up our gear
and walked. Taylor walked up to David and
asked if hed stick up for them and prevent the
walkout. Davids response was to burst into tears.
He didnt want us to go. But hed probably been
listening to Ralph, all the things hed made up. By
now the club was packed with Bromley art school
students, and various friends and fans of David,
and The Lower Third were convinced that David
or Ralph would run after them and relent. They

didnt.
We thought within a few days [David] would
come running back, says Graham Rivens. But of
course he couldnt do that, because Mr Horton was
pulling the strings. After a couple of days waiting
for Davids call, The Lower Third carried on
without him for a few shows, before splitting and
joining other bands.
The departure of The Lower Third marked a
triumph for Ralph Horton; it would also be
symbolic in Davids own career. His peers and
rivals like Jagger, Lennon and indeed Steve
Marriott whose third single with the Small
Faces, Sha-La-La-La-Lee, had soared to number
three in the charts as Davids own single
languished at the bottom each shared a
commitment to their own band, building up a
grassroots following via show after gruelling
show. This was an English rock n roll convention
that David ignored; his vision was more oldfashioned, something out of the tinselly showbiz
conventions of the fifties, where managers nurture
their protgs like mother hens. There was

something unmistakably square about Davids

loyalty to Numero Uno, rather than the gang
mentality of rock n roll. And in the short run, his
career would suffer.
Ralph Horton, meanwhile, revelled in the job of
finding a compliant backing band for his charge,
placing an advertisement for replacement
musicians in Melody Maker that same week.
Bassist Derek Dek Fearnley was among the first
to turn up at Warwick Square. Within thirty
seconds of walking into the basement apartment he
decided he wouldnt take the job. I just felt this
strange, gay atmosphere it made me feel very
uncomfortable.
Ushered in by Horton, Derek saw a skinny,
camp young man, reclining on a bed; confused, he
was trying to assess the situation when David
calmly started detailing how he wrote all his own
material, before producing a cigarette packet
Literally, a piece of card from a fag packet, with
some chords written on the back and the bassist
found himself intrigued, against his better
judgement. David picked up his twelve-string and

strummed through some chords, humming along.

After eight bars or so, Fearnley was transfixed:
this was not the predictable R&B most London
musicians were churning out. Then by the time we
got maybe halfway through I thought, I dont care
whats going on here I want to work with this
guy.
Guitarist John Hutchinson went through a similar
process, hearing from Jack Barry at the Marquee
that there was a singer looking for a new band,
turning up for an audition at the club on the
Saturday, and jamming along on a Bo Diddley riff.
Hutchinson Hutch and David soon
established a natural, musicians rapport, a bond of
which Ralph Horton was, says Hutch, jealous.
Horton wanted a pliable band of non-entities who
wouldnt challenge his own relationship with
Bowie. And for that reason, says Hutch, [This
band] were more meek. We did it and we acted
like a backing band.
Drummer John Eager joined up at the same time
as Fearnley, and Hutch suggested a keyboard
player, Derek Chow Boyes, whom he knew from

the Yorkshire club circuit. Radio London DJ Earl

Richmond, who introduced their sets at the
Marquee, named them The Buzz, and within a
couple of days they were filling in for The Lower
Third at a string of live dates and, on 4 March,
Ready, Steady, Go!, miming to Cant Help
Thinking About Me. Steve Marriott was on the
same show with the Small Faces, jumping around
and joshing David as the cameras rolled. It was
good-natured fun, but it showed how David was
falling behind the Small Faces singer who had a
lot more exposure, success, confidence and natural
character [than David]. Thats the one thing I
remember from that show, says Hutch.
A few weeks later, the effects of The Lower
Thirds departure became more obvious, when The
Buzz turned up at Pyes Marble Arch studios to
record a follow-up to Cant Help Thinking About
Me. There were no tempo changes or cranked-up
guitars on Do Anything You Say it was neat,
and well played, but the Spector-ish gloss and
Motown-style on-beat drums couldnt mask a
horrible blandness. The thrill had gone David

sounded like a bad Tom Jones imitator.

Released to capitalise on a near-hit, Do
Anything You Say stalled; Davids career seemed
to have done the same. And while David had built
up a small following at the Marquee, when they
ventured outside of London for a short tour in
April to mark the singles release, according to
Derek Fearnley their set left audiences confused,
which included dates in Scotland where, to be
honest, the kids didnt really get it. Realising the
audience wanted some familiar songs, David
introduced a cover of Knock on Wood, and Tim
Hardins If I Were a Carpenter. The Buzz were
competent, but not dynamic, according to Hutch.
Davids musical confusion, without the foil of The
Lower Third, would become obvious, to the extent
that his period with The Buzz would soon be
airbrushed out of history notably, by himself.
Much later he would claim, For a number of years
I worked with rhythm and blues bands my
participation in them formed my own black ties.
Its understandable that hed forgotten his most
forgettable music.

Many fans and friends of the time remembered

Davids work with The Lower Third; few of them
mention The Buzz, who worked up a funkier, more
jazzy style than their predecessors, but were
milder and tamer, in both music and mentality.
Sacking The Lower Third might have suited Ralph
Horton, but it seemed an act of self-sabotage.
David appeared unconcerned. As The Buzz
observed, he liked hanging out with a band, sharing
his obsessions and flights of fancy. But he was
fundamentally a loner: his main fantasy was of a
nomad lifestyle. This was the primary attraction
of hanging out at Hortons flat, for by now he was
open about the claustrophobia that living with his
mother and father inspired. This claustrophobia
also inspired the rapid turnover of people with
whom he worked the moment they started seeing
themselves as a permanent fixture, or making
demands, David started seeing them as part of the
dullness and convention that oppressed him. As
Dek Fearnley, the man closest to David in 1966,
observed even at the time, He wanted to get away
from home. And he wanted to get away from being

in a band, in exactly the same way, if that makes

sense.
For those close to him, Davids dreaminess,
his desire to escape the humdrum, was his most
powerful and charming character trait. He knew
how to make boring situations, like waiting for a
bus or train, entertaining. He was on a higher
plane, really, says Fearnley. He wouldnt be
talking about the weather or the latest Who single,
he was simply off in his own world. This manchild blend of escapism and hard-nosed careerism
was intriguing there would be constant flights of
fantasy or obsessions that he would draw his
friends into. In essence, this seemed to be a mindcontrol technique, to blot out the everyday details
of life in Bromley. In other personalities, such
escapist tendencies or daydreaming would have
been the mark of an ineffectual, Walter Mitty
character, but David worked at turning his
fantasies into reality, spending long hours working
on arrangements, or planning the next step in his
career.
In fact, with the failure of Do Anything You

Say, it seemed that David didnt actually have a

career; but that hardly impaired his ability to move
on. This time around, it wouldnt be the band that
was ditched in order to break the deadlock, but the
man who had, just a few months earlier, seen off
The Lower Third. According to Kenny Bell, Ralph
Horton was aware he was becoming surplus to
requirements, He came to the end of any money he
had to spend on David, and realised David would
probably be off. So the best thing he could do was
score a deal with somebody else and at least retain
something. Desperate to secure help and, just as
crucially, money Horton reapproached Ken Pitt.
A crucial character in David Bowies history,
Ken Pitt is also one of the most complex and
misunderstood. Generally depicted as a traditional,
old-school figure a gay showbiz manager in the
tradition of Brian Epstein Ken Pitt is in reality
far more complicated and intriguing. Born and
raised in Southall, Middlesex, Pitt had studied art
at the School of Photo-Engraving and Lithography
at Fleet Street, and worked briefly for two London
print companies before joining the army in March

1941. He worked in signals, landed at Gold Beach

on D-Day, was among the first Allied troops to
arrive at Belsen, and served briefly in Palestine
before returning to the family home in Southall,
where he joined the music business as MC for a
local dance band. Pitt soon established himself as
a key PR figure in the UKs nascent record
industry, and by 1956 he was already representing
Stan Kenton, Billy Eckstine, Billy Daniels and
Liberace. In 1966, Pitt had built a thriving business
operating in both management and PR, his major
acts including David Anthonys Moods and
Manfred Mann. At the beginning of the year, he had
turned down a plea from Mike Prustin to comanage the recently renamed Marc Bolan. But
when Ralph Horton came to see Pitt in his office
on 5 April, insisting that Pitt had the keys to the
doors that are being slammed in our face at the
moment, Pitt was interested enough to turn up for
a show at the Marquee on 17 April, without having
heard any of David Bowies music beforehand.
Winston Churchill, hailed by many as the ultimate

Great Briton, once explained his crucial

achievement of bringing America into the Second
World War with the words, No lover ever studied
every whim of his mistress as I did those of
President Roosevelt. David Bowie, self-styled
Great Briton, showed a similar mastery of political
realities. His performance on 17 April was one of
the most important in his life and he delivered.
As Pitt puts it, if you went to see David Bowie
and David Bowie knew you were coming, he
would put on a show for you. Which he did for me.
And yes, I was greatly impressed. With everything.
Everything.
The band, Pitt says, were forgettable, playing
vaguely Mod music. David himself was another
matter. Pitt had worked with Sinatra and Bob
Dylan and could recognise charisma. David had it.
Although Pitt retained few details of the songs
David and The Buzz played, he remembered
Davids beige jumper, with buttons down one
shoulder. It looked like something your mother
had made, but I noticed it fitted him very well. It
was different.

The band ran through their set, without any

number particularly registering, before their last
song. At which point, says Pitt, the lights went
down, with a single spot on David, who launched
into an impassioned version of When You Walk
Through a Storm a classic show-business tune,
which Ken knew from Judy Garlands version. Pitt
was transfixed, I had simply never seen anything
like that before.
After the show, David came up to greet Pitt and
with Ralph they went back to Ralphs flat, where
they chatted for a very long time. Pitt noticed that
when he raised a subject that was new to David,
the young singer became animated: He had this
habit, of sitting on one leg and then rocking
backwards and forwards in a chair when he got
excited. I noticed after I discussed something he
would have this look, and his eyes were bright.
That impressed me very very much. Then, taking
command of the situation, this man-child, who
seemed as eager to learn as he was to take control,
turned to Ralph and said, Lets do a deal with
Ken.

There is an intriguing footnote to David Bowies

acquisition of the manager who steered his career
over the next four years. Ken Pitt ascribes his
conversion to David Bowie as being inspired by
his performance of a Judy Garland song. But
Bowies MD and bassist Dek Fearnley, who
arranged most of the material, is adamant that, at
that performance, The Buzz closed their show with
an entirely different song, Tony Newleys What
Kind of Fool am I?. The discrepancy perfectly
illustrates David Bowies ability to be whatever
the object of his attention wanted him to be.
In later years, Bowie fans and writers would make
much of the subtext of that nights conversation,
which saw Ralph Horton hand control to Ken Pitt,
and in some imaginations many of the
undercurrents of that evening were comparable to
Joe Ortons Entertaining Mr Sloane, the play that
immortalised Londons gay culture. But the
participants were more complex than the clichs
weve inherited. Ken Pitt, a fan of Judy Garland,
devotee of Oscar Wilde, and supporter of the

emerging Campaign for Homosexual Equality, was

also a married man, who often mentioned his
romances with Hollywood glamour models.
Tall and gangly, rather refined and formallooking, Pitt could expound with equal enthusiasm
on the virtue of Keats and The Velvet Underground
in his clipped, measured tones, and was a master
of the elegantly phrased, slightly waspish letters
that were an essential management tool in
Londons old-school music industry. Pitt doesnt
believe in applying labels to sexuality. People
always have to say now. It was better when people
didnt have to say. His vagueness is consistent
with other rock managers like Andrew Loog
Oldham, who was straight but loved camping it up
to seem more like Brian Epstein or Kit Lambert
the gay managerial archetypes in the swinging
London of 1966.
In other respects, Pitt was anything but vague.
First of all, he injected some professionalism into
Davids business affairs, and paid the bills that
started to cascade into his office. Pitts trademark
acerbity shows in his comments that Ralphs

management of Davids affairs, notably using

Davids income to pay his own bills, was not the
usual way of doing things. Over subsequent
months, Pitt paid for outstanding phone bills, new
shirts and endless running costs for the band van,
all marks of his devotion to Davids cause.
Pitts enthusiasm was in stark contrast to the
situation at Pye; in June, Hatch started producing I
Dig Everything then, dissatisfied with The Buzzs
performance, replaced them all with session
musicians. The resulting single, with its cheesy,
chirrupy organ, and Austin Powers grooviness,
bore more of Hatchs production trademarks than
any of his previous Bowie sides, and the result,
says Hatch himself, was that it didnt work at all.
We were getting further away from what we had
with The Lower Third single, rough as it was.
Although it was obvious that I Dig Everything
was destined for oblivion, David was
unconcerned. He knew those songs werent that
good, its just what was needed at the time, says
John Hutchinson, who sensed that Bowie was
ready to move on. Hutch, meanwhile, was

pessimistic about The Buzzs future and confided

to David that he planned to get married and find a
conventional job. David found the notion of getting
married bizarre and, the night before the wedding,
tried to talk Hutch out of it. We were in
Dunstable, hed found these two girls, and he
wanted me to go off with him and the girls
instead. David was supposed to turn up for the
wedding, but was unsurprisingly absent the next
day. Hutch left in search of married bliss and a
regular paycheck in Yorkshire, and was replaced
by Billy Gray.
Despite the attractions of the female fans who
turned up at his shows, David was fast becoming
disenchanted with live performances, live
audiences and, seemingly, rock n roll in general.
By the autumn of 1966, the British beatboom was
subsiding. With The Beatles retiring from live
shows, and the presence of Frank Sinatra and Tom
Jones in the Top 10 alongside Davids
contemporaries like The Kinks and the Small
Faces, the charts were charmingly diverse and
kitsch, with none of todays predictable rock

conformity.
Much of Davids day-to-day existence was
similarly kitsch and charming, for over the summer
of 1966 he spent many of his afternoons at places
like Dek Fearnleys brothers house in Sussex,
observing the family comings and goings, playing
with Fearnleys nieces and nephews. He was
relaxed, soaking up what was a carefree
environment compared to his own strait-laced,
claustrophobic family home. The silly, or comic,
moments were what struck him most including
the moment when a shame-faced Fearnley admitted
hed subtracted seven years from his age when he
joined The Buzz, and was in fact twenty-seven.
Youre joking? asked David, incredulous at the
thought that he was hanging out with such an
ancient codger an uncle no less who hadnt
settled down yet. It was three months later, when
David started to run through a new song, named
Uncle Arthur about a thirty-two-year-old who
still reads comics, follows Batman that Dek
realised he had been immortalised in song.
Alan Mair, whose group The Beatstalkers were

managed by Ken Pitt, also spent many afternoons

with David, being shown his songs, and later
hanging out in the office. He sometimes brought his
three-year-old son, Frankie, with him, and the two
built up such a rapport that a couple of times Mair
left the toddler in his care. Like Uncle Dek,
Frankie and his toy soldiers were captured in song,
as The Little Bombardier. Again, the situation
was altered into a story where Little Frankie
Mair is the adult figure who, like David, enjoys
hanging out with kids, and attracts suspicion. The
song, a playtime waltz, perfectly illustrates
Davids mindset of cheeky humour, child-like
wonder and adult cynicism. This wasnt Bowies
only baby-sitting job, for in quiet times he looked
after Lucy, the daughter of Tom Parker, a friend
from Kent who played piano with The New
Animals. Kids just trust and gravitate towards
some people, says Mair. David is one of them.
Mair knew both Pitt and Bowie well, and saw
the managers influence on Bowie at close hand. In
later years, Pitts detractors would contend he
wanted to turn Bowie into an all-round entertainer.

In fact, Bowie had joined Pitt as a singer in a rock

band; soon he would change into a songwriter,
with a unique world view. In that respect, Pitts
influence was the making of him. His intentions
were right. He was saying, Put make-up on, dress
flamboyantly be gregarious! says Mair. Pitts
role was not so much to educate David as to give
him licence to see himself as an artist, at the same
time encouraging him to write more, pushing his
songs to other artists.
Pitt knew that David was going nowhere with
Pye, where Hatch was being pressured by MD
Louis Benjamin to drop Davids contract, and he
already had a new record company in mind. Early
in October he funded a recording session with The
Buzz, once more at RG Jones in Wimbledon,
where David produced a second version of The
London Boys, plus new songs Rubber Band and
Please Mr. Gravedigger. Together, these quirky,
observational songs represented a radical aboutturn from Davids Pye material, and Pitt was
confident that they would help him score a record
deal. What I wanted was an album that would act

like a CV, says Pitt. I had not come across

another nineteen-year-old who wrote songs like
that. I went to Decca determined to get an album
deal although that was theoretically impossible,
because they didnt make albums except if youd
had a hit.
Pitt made his approach to Decca via Tony Hall,
the companys Promotions Manager. Hall had
become the key figure in the establishment of the
labels hip Deram imprint. He was taken with
Bowies songs they sounded like Anthony
Newley 2 and passed Pitt along to Hugh Mendl,
who became transfixed. I think I would have
signed him even if he didnt have such obvious
musical talent. But he did have talent. He was
bursting with creativity.
Mendl was one of the most senior executives in
the British music industry: in fact, he had literally
invented a huge section of it, through his discovery
of Lonnie Donegan and Tommy Steele, and he
launched many significant careers throughout the
sixties, often while battling Deccas innate
conservatism. He rated the nineteen-year-old

singer, with a string of failed singles behind him,

as one of the most inspirational talents with whom
he had ever worked. I had a minor obsession
about David I just thought he was the most
talented, magical person. Mendl was well aware
of the resemblance between Bowies voice and
that of Anthony Newley, another Mendl signing,
but was untroubled by it. The [resemblance] was
purely vocal. They were entirely different. Tony
was an actor. David was David Bowie.
An effusive but rather patrician character,
Mendl had been expected to join the diplomatic
service after graduating from Oxford, but despite
the scepticism of his grandfather, Sir Sigismund
Mendl, then chairman of Decca, he worked his
way up through the family company. Better
educated and more worldly than Tony Hatch, the
man who had signed David to Pye, Mendls nearobsession with David is recognisable as the same
heterosexual crush that writer Charles Shaar
Murray remembers David Bowie exploiting so
potently in the seventies. Davids discovery of this
power was as significant a breakthrough as his

improving skills at songwriting. David Bowie had

grasped a fundamental truth: before you can be a
genius, you have to seem like a genius.
Mendls fascination with Bowie inspired him to
release Bowies self-produced Rubber Band and
The London Boys as his single debut, while inhouse producer Mike Vernon would oversee the
album. Vernon had his own impressive track
record, championing acts like Eric Clapton and
Fleetwood Mac, and he too was impressed with
the young singers intellect. There was talk of a
lot of things, concepts and poetry that went right
over my head, he remembers, leaving the
impression he wasnt totally convinced by Davids
young genius persona. But there was no denying
Bowies creativity, for with the prospect of an
outlet for the songs and pictures that were flowing
through his head, music was pouring out of him.
Over the autumn of 1966, David was writing
frenetically; in one early list of contenders for his
debut album, he and Pitt itemised over thirty songs
including Over the Wall, and now-forgotten
compositions such as Say Goodbye to Mr Mind

and Lincoln House. His ambition extended to

abandoning traditional instrumentation in favour of
a more orchestral approach, influenced both by
Brian Wilsons ground-breaking Pet Sounds,
released that summer, and by the fact he no longer
had his own backing band. Guitarist Billy Gray left
The Buzz in late November, and the others were
let go a week later. Ralph Horton, still acting as
a kind of co-manager, wrote to Pitt, who had left
for a trip to America and then Australia, explaining
that they had decided to give up live performances,
telling him that David hates ballrooms and the
kids. Poignantly, Dek, Chow and John Ego
Eager offered to stay on without pay after their last
show, in Shrewsbury on 2 December, and also to
help out with his album, inspiring another flood of
tears from David.
Bowie approached this crucial rite of passage
with the sense of calm and organisation that had so
impressed The Manish Boys, and with two
characteristics that would come to define his
career: a willingness to take creative risks and a
genius for delegation. He had assured Mendl and

Vernon that he would oversee all the arrangements

for the album a task usually looked after by a
specialist. Then he told bassist Dek Fearnley that
the two of them would do this crucial job, together.
Fearnleys sole qualification was childhood
piano lessons and he was intimidated by the
prospect, but David confidently steered him well
beyond his comfort zone. Aided by a dog-eared
edition of Frida Dinns Observers Book of Music,
a guide to the principal orchestral instruments, they
attacked their task. It was bloody hard work, says
Fearnley. I knew how to read the staves and that a
bar had four crotchets, David had never seen or
written a note, so I was the one qualified to write
stuff out.
The two worked for hours at Deks brother
Geralds piano: David humming, Dek scribbling.
The arrangement for Rubber Band was their first
experiment with this working method. The quirky,
Heath Robinson feel enhanced the songs off-kilter
charm, but as work on the album proper started at
Deccas Studio 2 in Hampstead on 14 November,
1966, the pressure was ratcheted up. We didnt

have enough time, says Dek, and it got

embarrassing handing over these scribbles to these
musicians from the London Philharmonic! By
Christmas, the two were behind schedule, and
Fearnley was left to arrange a couple of songs on
his own, including The Laughing Gnome, and
explain the charts to the musicians, while David
oversaw proceedings from the control room.
Mike Vernon remembers being handed a pile of
papers and helping assemble each song like a
jigsaw puzzle, but he and engineer Gus Dudgeon
enjoyed the challenge of recording comedy voices
and miking up gravel. Most of the musicians were
supportive, transposing parts written in the wrong
key, although one absolute bastard clarinettist did
simply hand his manuscript back to Fearnley,
saying, there are five notes in this bar. There
should be four, and refused to play.
Just before Christmas, Neil Slaven, who
oversaw the artwork for many of Deccas sleeves,
dropped in on the session. Mike introduced him,
briefly. David chatted with Slaven Hello,
Mikes told me all about you! interrogating the

blues fan about his record collection, seemingly

fascinated by his expertise on obscure Chess
singles. Bowie seemed a world apart from the rock
and blues musicians Slaven and Vernon normally
hung out with. A slightly bizarre, undeniably
impressive young man: slight, with floppy, collarlength hair and somehow schoolboyish, with a fey,
theatrical air. And then Slaven watched from the
control room, dumbstruck, as Vernon rolled the
tapes, seeing this intense but camp apparition
shuffling around Decca Studio Two, crunching
underfoot some scattered pebbles and stones which
he had shaken over the studio floor, apparently to
make some kind of backing track for a spokenword piece.
When Slaven heard a rough mix of the epic that
Vernon and Bowie were crafting, he was even
more disconcerted: a monologue, in a theatrical
cockney voice which sounded nasal, as if he had a
bad cold, delivered over found sounds, like the
crunching gravel and the rustle of driving rain. The
subject was apparently a Lambeth gravedigger, a
little old man with a shovel in his hand. Although

Slaven heard this song just once or twice, it stuck

with him, and he never got the strange spectacle he
had witnessed out of his head. What was most
striking was the way this studio neophyte delivered
this extravagant confection without a trace of
embarrassment. It should have been ludicrous, but
despite himself, Slaven was impressed. I thought,
Here is someone who really is an individual talent
someone who truly follows his own ideas.
The track in question, Please Mr. Gravedigger,
was, by most objective standards, dreadful. Its
description of Mary Ann who [was] ten, full of
life obviously refers to ten-year-old Lesley Ann
Downey, who was tortured and murdered by
Moors Murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
The song was tasteless and exploitative, but it also
illustrated how the nineteen-year-old David Bowie
had learned to use the recording studio as an
instrument in itself, a lesson which was at the heart
of his future career. Today, it ranks as both a badtaste period piece and an example of artistic
courage.

The drawn-out sessions complete with French

horns and English whimsy, just like The Beatles
sessions for Sgt Pepper recorded over the same
timeframe resumed after the Christmas break,
with The Laughing Gnome completed in January,
and the final three tracks including a re-recorded
Rubber Band finished later in February 1967.
Predictably, most of the personnel involved
remembered The Laughing Gnome which was
released as a single on 14 April as one of their
favourite sessions. Vernon forgot his doubts and
dived in, suggesting even more varispeeded
effects, and engineer Gus Dudgeon totally went
crazy, says Vernon, suggesting gnome puns and
chirpy voices.
In future years, The Laughing Gnome was the
early Bowie song especially singled out for
ridicule. Yet as long as youre happy to abandon
all notions of taste, the song is brilliantly crafted,
from Dek Fearnleys opening oboe melody,
through to the breakdown after the chorus, as
David intones said the laughing gnome. One
of the rare songs on the album where the execution

matches its ambition, The Laughing Gnome is

infectious like a skin ailment and charmingly
redolent of those summer afternoons spent playing
with little Frankie Mair. In the admittedly narrow
niche of pseudo-psychedelic cockney music-hall
childrens songs, it reigns supreme.
When Vernon wrapped up the sessions on 25
February, the producer felt a profound sense of
achievement merely to have realised Bowies
kitchen sink epics. But the satisfaction didnt
extend to optimism about the albums prospects. If
Im honest, I really thought it didnt have any
chance of commercial success whatsoever.
The end of the album also marked the official
end of Davids relationship with Ralph Horton, for
on 19 January, Davids joint manager retired from
the music business, later joining the RAC.
Haywood Jones was left to deal with the letters
from Raymond Cook that arrived at Plaistow
Grove, plaintively asking about Hortons
whereabouts, in hope of the payback of his loan.
David, meanwhile, was buoyed with the
enthusiasm of Derams executives, most of whom

thought The Laughing Gnome, plus Love You till

Tuesday, were sure-fire hits. But even as the
biggest artistic achievement of his life approached
its release, he was in what would become
characteristic fashion preparing to move on.
The inspiration arrived via a white-label acetate
that Ken Pitt had acquired on his trip to New York.
As an art enthusiast, Pitt had engineered a trip to
Andy Warhols Factory on 47th Street. Initially
unaware of Warhols involvement in the music
scene, he had nonetheless briefly met Lou Reed
and was given an acetate of The Velvet
Undergrounds as yet unreleased debut album.
After a promotional trip to Australia with another
management charge, Christian St Peters, Pitt
returned to London on 16 December, and handed
over the acetate to David. The album is still a
treasured possession, and a source of pride that
not only was I to cover [a] Velvets song before
anyone else in the world, I actually did it before
the album came out. Now thats the essence of
Mod.
In forthcoming years, David Bowie would

become the worlds best-known champion for the

Velvets; but in 1967, his attempts to assimilate
their narco-deadpan thuggery resulted in some of
his most ludicrous music.
Some of the inspiration came in the form of The
Riot Squad, a London five-piece, which, through
various line-ups, had worked with both Larry Page
and Joe Meek, led throughout by Bob Flag. The
feisty, eccentric sax player had bumped into Bowie
during a Buzz show at the Marquee the previous
August and renewed his acquaintance over coffees
at La Gioconda, mentioning his band were holding
auditions for a singer. Bowie volunteered, partly
for a laugh, partly to help them out, and partly so
he could experiment with some new material for,
although Dek was still on the scene, keyboardist
Chow had bailed out halfway through the Deram
sessions.
The new band worked through new material at
The Swan pub in Leytonstone on 15 and 16 March,
readying David for The Riot Squads support slot
with Cream in Basildon on the 17th. Seven shows
later, David enlisted the bands help for an after-

hours Decca session with Gus Dudgeon, to record

his cover version of the Velvets Waiting for the
Man, plus Davids own Little Toy Soldier.
Waiting for the Man would become a
touchstone of Davids career, and this early
version was effective; stripped down and funky,
with taut sax and harmonica embellishing the
stomping onbeat drums and a rangy bass riff, all
neatly underpinning Davids carbon-copy Lou
Reed drawl. However, it is Davids own using
the term loosely Little Toy Soldier that was
truly arresting. A juxtaposition of cockney music
hall with the Marquis de Sade, the song is the aural
equivalent of a P. T. Barnum fairground
monstrosity: a monkey body stitched to a fishtail.
Davids hearty main melody introducing Little
Sadie sounds like cheery English rocker Tommy
Steele; then eight bars in, he drops an entire
section taste the whip, and bleed for me from
the Velvets Venus in Furs. This fascinating curio
seemed designed primarily as a provocative live
song, where its mix of comedy and sadomasochism echoed some of the art-college

craziness of the Bonzo Dog band; this was New

York noir, reborn as Victorian music hall.
Although David Bowie was the first European
musician to appreciate the importance of The
Velvet Underground, it would be years before he
learned to assimilate it.
Recorded too late for inclusion on the Deram
album, the two songs would become a highpoint of
The Riot Squads live set. For Little Toy
Soldier, David, in psychedelic make-up, his hair
back-combed, would brandish a whip and lash
Bob Flag, who wore white face and bowler hat
like one of Clockwork Oranges Droogs plus
protective padding. The shows were anarchic,
hilarious like contemporaries The Bonzo Dog
Band, whom Flag later joined and reminiscent of
Marc Bolans chaotic shows with hippie outfit
Johns Children. Unsurprisingly, the audience were
confused. But David was always a laugh. He
liked us because wed do anything, says Flag. The
same could be said of David, who occasionally
would reach over and fondle Flags hair; the
audience were left unaware this was a shared joke

about the wig the thirty-six-year-old sax player

wore to disguise his advanced years.
Although The Riot Squad provided back-up to
David at his 13 April show at the Tiles club to
mark the following days release of The Laughing
Gnome, David otherwise remained an anonymous
member of the band for their performances right
through to the end of May. Although in later years
he often mentioned how early hed picked up on
The Velvet Underground, for his own career he
stuck to the mainstream in search of a
breakthrough. Certainly, there was no connection
between The Riot Squads loveably cranky
recordings, and the smug, show-business gloss of
Love You till Tuesday, which was re-recorded
on with an orchestra directed by Ivor Raymonde,
best known for I Only Want to Be with You.
With its gelatinous strings, and trite, complacent
lyrics, Love You till Tuesday was a naked
statement of Davids yearning for a hit, without any
of the charming eccentricity of David Bowie,
which was released on 1 June, the same day as The
Beatles rather more successful Sgt Peppers

Lonely Hearts Club Band. By the time hed

completed the album, David had jettisoned no less
than five bands in his drive for mainstream
success. The failure of Love You till Tuesday
demonstrated that ruthlessness and ambition alone
were not enough.
Yet as just a few people at the time noticed,
ambition was not the only thing that drove David
Bowie. For over that early summer of 1967 much
of it spent lovingly teaching The Riot Squad his
songs line by line, or playing them Frank Zappa
records up in his bedroom at Plaistow Grove his
friends grew to appreciate another compulsion: an
intoxicating, child-like obsession with music,
which had deepened and crystallised in the years
since he had since pored over album sleeves at
Medhursts in Bromley. At heart earnest,
obsessive, David Bowie was a simple fan-boy,
with this compulsion sometimes battling,
sometimes complementing, his ruthlessness. Only
with failure would the fan-boy part of him be
allowed to surface once more. Failure, it turned
out, would be the making of David Bowie.

5
I Wish Something Would Happen
It was a bit like the Warhol Factory if
you wanted to hang out you had to learn
heavy manners. And David came in,
learning moves. He was clearly
absorbing a lot: mutating.
Mick Farren

The sudden inactivity following the polite, but

restrained reception for Davids Deram debut was
a shock. He had stalled: 1968 would be a year that
David Bowie would sit around Ken Pitts flat in
Manchester Street, his legs tucked under him in
trademark fashion, sighing, I wish something
would happen.
Despite its negligible sales, the album did win

some prominent supporters. Melody Makers

Chris Welch had been turned on to the album by
The Nice. Penny Valentine, of Disc, was even
more influential: a lucid, widely fted but
unpretentious critic, she had an unerring ear both
for talent and for a hit. She supported David
faithfully over the next five years, celebrating his
talent without, for the time being, predicting
success. She did love him, says Chris Welch,
but she did mention how he wouldnt stop ringing
her up.
Haywood Jones, in the meantime, was in regular
contact with Ken Pitt. As ever, he was politely
grateful for Pitts efforts on behalf of his son, but
Davids nocturnal songwriting activities were
adding to the stress in Plaistow Grove. It was
around this time that Terry, Davids half-brother,
had reappeared at the house. After his National
Service in the Royal Air Force, Terry had lived
intermittently with Peggys sister, Pat, but now he
had become reconciled with his step-father
Haywood, and the long-absent prodigal son moved
in to the tiny, overcrowded house. The eventual

solution to the overcrowding was for David to

move in with Ken. Bizarrely, this move to his
managers flat in Manchester Street was the first
time the twenty-year-old had left home. Now the
aspiring nomad would rely on handouts from Ken,
rather than Haywood.
Although David had long outstayed his welcome
at his parents cramped two-up two-down, it
wasnt just Peggys suspicions that he was trying to
evade. After Terry had arrived back in Bromley,
David had started sharing some of his own musical
obsessions with Terry, who had turned him on to
so many musicians, from Eric Dolphy to John
Coltrane. Hoping to reciprocate, David had taken
his half-brother to see Cream at the Bromel Club,
in February 1967. It was Terrys first encounter
with high-volume rock n roll, and the experience
was disastrous. According to David, about
halfway through he started feeling very, very bad. I
had to take him out of the club because it was
really starting to affect him he was swaying
Hed never heard anything so loud.
As they emerged from the hotel doorway onto

Bromley Hill, Terry collapsed onto the pavement.

He said the ground was opening up and there
was fire and stuff pouring out the pavement, and I
could almost see it for him, because he was
explaining it so articulately. Terry had suffered a
schizophrenic fit. During his stay at the house,
Terry also told David he regularly had such
visions. This revelation was overwhelming,
disturbing, but David did not share his reaction
with those with whom he spent most time. His
characteristic reserve, that urge, noticed by Dek
Fearnley, never to discuss the claustrophobia of
Plaistow Grove, seemed to apply to Terry, too.
David kept his concerns about his half-brother to
himself, and those around him continued to believe
that he was an only child.
Once Haywood had crammed his books and
records into his tiny Fiat 500 and helped install
him in Manchester Street, David cocooned himself
in the neat, comfortable bachelor pad. Many of his
afternoons were spent wandering around Fitzrovia
and the other quiet, elegant Georgian streets around
Manchester Square. Often hed return from these

magpie trips with a childish enthusiasm, presenting

Pitt with his new discoveries: a Victorian
childrens book hed bought from Pollacks Toy
Museum, brass bells from some swinging clothes
shop, or simply chestnuts, flowers, or leaves that
hed found in the street. At other times, David
could be found shuffling through the bookshelves
either side of the living-room fireplace, pulling out
works like Saint Exuperys Le Petit Prince,
various first editions devoted to Oscar Wilde and
Aubrey Beardsley who was a distant relation of
Pitts typographer Eric Gill and German
expressionist Egon Schiele. Pitt enjoyed his role as
mentor, and in a Pygmalian-esque manner, he
would take David to cultural hotspots or the local
Italian place, Restaurant Anticapri. Its possible
that Pitt exaggerates his education of the nineteenyear-old, whom he describes as not a cultured
person in those early days, but theres no doubt
David was soaking up influences.
David enjoyed those months closeted with Ken.
On several occasions he frolicked around the flat
naked; Pitt noticed his long, weighty penis and

concedes that David was a tease. On another

occasion Pitt emerged from the bathroom naked
and David, laughing, mimed measuring Pitts
penis, acting out an awed expression. The incident
was recounted by one writer to illustrate the sexual
frisson between them, but Pitt rejects that
interpretation: it was simply funny. Any sexual
undertone was in their minds, not ours. To this
day Pitt, who knows more than anyone of how
David would use his sexuality to win people over,
professes himself ignorant of his charges true
sexual orientation. Is David gay? I honestly dont
know.
Bowies arrival at the flat confirmed his status
as Pitts main client, and the manager constantly
fired off letters, looking for press, song-writing or
acting opportunities. Deram had gone quiet after
the release of David Bowie; Tony Hall, one of
Davids supporters, had left, while Mendl and his
friend Dick Rowe, both responsible for the label,
were beset with political problems. Instead, the
main focus of Davids commercial activities
started to centre around his publishers, Essex

Music.
David had been introduced to Essex by Tony
Hall, an old friend of the companys celebrated
proprietor, David Platz. Ralph Horton had signed
David to Essex during Pitts trip to the USA, much
to Pitts chagrin, for he had been chasing a much
bigger advance. But this alliance would prove
vital over the next couple of years, placing Bowie
within a sprawling musical nexus which included
production companies, overseen by Denny Cordell
and later Gus Dudgeon, plus publishing clients that
included Anthony Newley, Lionel Bart, Lonnie
Donegan, The Moody Blues and, from the spring of
1967, Marc Bolan. This ensured Marc and David
continued to tread similar career paths, although
they diverged when it came to songwriting, for
while Marc kept his songs to himself, David was
evangelistic about pushing his own material and
getting it heard.
The motivation was social as well as
professional. For David, sharing his songs was
how he related to people. In the later days of The
Riot Squad he would happily spend hours teaching

his songs to Croak Prebble, who replaced him as

singer. The same applied to his involvement with
The Beatstalkers, then Scotlands leading live
band, a tight-knit posse of Glaswegians who would
have intimidated many outsiders. But not David.
He had incredible confidence, says bassist Alan
Mair. No matter where you were, he would pick
up a guitar and sing full blast. Most people would
be cagey, even Freddie Mercury was quite humble
or quiet [in a similar situation], but David would
flabbergast me.
David gave The Beatstalkers Silver Treetop
School for Boys, a neat, Waterloo Sunset-style
short story of a dope-addled boys school. More
significantly, Over the Wall We Go was
recorded by a Robert Stigwood protg named
Oscar, later famous as sitcom actor Paul Nicholas.
A playground ditty, settting the line Over the wall
we go, all coppers are nanas to the tune of Pop
Goes the Weasel, it failed to trouble the charts but
found an entirely different audience: I played it all
the time at Middle Earth in the Roundhouse, says
DJ Jeff Dexter. It was a perfect record to play

against the Pigs, man, a psychedelic comedy

record and it had this fer-lum fer-lum fer-lum
beat that idiot dancers love. The single also
became a late-night Radio London favourite, a
camp psychedelic classic, loved by those whod
grown up on Billy Cotton and The Goons and
could cackle along in dope-enhanced hilarity.
None of these modest successes helped to sell
Davids own recordings, though, and Ken Pitt
remembers his frustration at a logjam of material,
recorded at Plaistow Grove or on an open-reel
recorder at Manchester Street, which seemed
destined never to be released. One evening Bowie
vented his frustration, says Pitt, by telling him, Im
going to write some Top 10 rubbish, then
proceeded to write a song which was neither. Let
Me Sleep Beside You would be his first
collaboration with Tony Visconti, the producer
with whom hes most associated: the finest song
Bowie had written to date, it would also become
the cause of his biggest artistic setback.
Tony Visconti had arrived in London in April 1967

at the invitation of Denny Cordell, whod worked

with him briefly in New York. Cordell was
overworked, Visconti had production experience
and crucially turned out to be a brilliant
arranger. Within weeks he was teamed with Denny
Laine and Procol Harum, while his addition of a
woodwind quartet to The Moves Flowers in the
Rain helped propel it to number two in the charts.
Visconti had already brought Marc Bolans new
project, Tyrannosaurus Rex, to Essex Music when
David Platz played him an album by another Essex
writer, David Bowie.

Visconti was intrigued, mostly by the albums

diversity, it was like a demo, trying everything:
Look, I can do this, and I can do that, too! He
was introduced to David in a tiny room at
Dumbarton House, Essex Musics Oxford Street
headquarters; the two built up a rapport straight
away, both of them fast-talking and obsessive, with
almost encyclopaedic musical tastes. The producer
listened to a number of Davids demos and picked
out Let Me Sleep Beside You as much for its
coherent, folk-rock style as its content. Taking
control of the project, Visconti located the
musicians and wrote out every note of the music
I had to, as we only had three hours for the
session and produced the recording at Advision.
The result was Davids most coherent, concise
song since Cant Help Thinking About Me. Its
lyrics I will show you dreams where the winner
never wins were vaguely Dylanish, its
dededudum dededum vocalising Bolan-ish. His
voice sounded mature and free of affectation,
while in the middle eight, his double-track vocals
are a foretaste of Ziggy Stardusts rock n roll

yell.
Let Me Sleep Beside You was a gorgeous
track, but it was nonetheless rejected by Deccas
regular Monday singles selection panel. The
decision marked the beginning of a minor crisis for
David (and a major crisis for Deram, as Denny
Cordell and Platz switched allegiance to EMI).
David had so far endured his career setbacks with
a characteristic calm, but over these months he
started to voice his pain. Steve Chapman was in
charge of Essex Musics demo studio, where hed
help David record songs or cut acetates of the
amazingly creative demos David crafted at
Manchester Street. The studio was tiny, and they
spent long hours in conversation; seventeen-yearold Chapman looked up to the worldly, intelligent
singer, he had this amazing palette of ideas,
Tibetan philosophy, mystical concepts. But late in
1967, shortly before Chapman left to join a band
named Juniors Eyes, he noticed, David sounded
quite depressed. He told me, Im thinking of
chucking it in. Really, Id like to become a
Buddhist monk.

Those frustrating afternoons, often spent hanging

around with no recordings in prospect, eventually
put paid to the youthful arrogance that Leslie Conn
remembered. Ken Pitt persevered, sending a copy
of the album to Mickie Most to drum up interest
Most didnt reply and fruitlessly chasing acting
and commercials jobs. By spring 1968, the crisis
of confidence had extended to Bowies manager,
according to Alan Mair, who after quitting the
Beatstalkers had been given the use of a spare
office by Ken Pitt. I think Ken Pitt had reached the
stage where he didnt know what to do with him.
One day he said to me, Do you want to be
Davids personal manager? I wasnt interested
but I think Ken had reached the point where he was
pulling his hair out. The situation deteriorated
further in March, when Deram rejected In the Heat
of the Morning and London Bye Ta Ta. It was
particularly painful for Hugh Mendl. It was so
hard, he reflects, sadly, he was a wonderful
person but at that time it was me against fate.
In the Bowie story, Deram have generally been
cast as villains, but In the Heat of the Morning

despite its elegant Visconti string arrangement

was undistinguished, its style essentially that of the
Deram album minus the cockney vocal. And in the
end, it was Bowie and Pitts decision to walk.
David came in and said, I dont think anythings
happening for me as a singer, says Mendl. He
told me, Im going to go and do dancing so
could I please be released?
Mendl had long, tortuous conversations with his
friend Dick Rowe, who was in similar straits with
Cat Stevens, who left Deram that spring after a
bout of tuberculosis. Distressed that the label was
about to fall apart, Mendl agreed to let David go,
but I had the feeling I was being a bit conned. At
the time he thought that the move was perhaps a
piece of grandstanding by Bowie, who had some
other masterwork up his sleeve. He couldnt have
been more wrong.
Davids claim that he was planning a new career
as a dancer was, for the moment, true. The move
seemed bizarre at the time; in retrospect, it marked
the transition from an ambitious boys conventional

career progression, to a series of inspired leaps

into the unknown. In 1968, with only a couple of
decent songs to his name, the twenty-one-year-old
David Bowie did not have many of the hallmarks
of a great artist. The one that he undoubtedly did
have was courage.
This fascinating digression started when a
secretary in Ken Pitts office sent a copy of the
Deram album to actor and dancer Lindsay Kemp.
Kemp was absolutely enchanted by the songs
and by the voice. It was reminiscent of my
favourite other singers like Anthony Newley and
Jacques Brel; a husky, smokey voice that was
plaintive, damaged. And I was able to identify
with that.
The performer started using When I Live My
Dream to open his show at The Little Theatre
Club off St Martins Lane; David took up Kemps
invitation to come and see a performance, and was
very flattered says Kemp. And the show
fascinated him, with me as Pierrot. And we met
afterwards and it was love at first sight. After the
show, David followed Lindsay to his flat in

Bateman Street, Soho; there, he beheld a British

version of the New York underworld depicted by
The Velvet Underground. My flat was filled with
strippers, hookers, pimps and druggies,
remembers Kemp, fondly. Given the wide-eyed
quality of the Deram album, Kemp had assumed
Bowie would be as innocent as a child but was
proven wrong. He looked around, then he sat
down and was completely at home.
The story of Kemps life is theatrical,
picaresque and rather heroic. Born in Birkenhead,
his sailor father was lost at sea when he was two;
Kemps mother encouraged him to dress up and
paint his face, then, worried hed taken to it too
well, sent him to Naval College, where he read
ballet books and learned to survive by enchanting
the boys, dancing clad only in red paint and toilet
paper. After art college in Bradford, where he was
friends with David Hockney, he trained with, and
was thrown out by, the Ballet Rambert. Aided by
his bald, muscular and blind collaborator Jack
Birkett often billed as The Incredible Orlando
he developed an unconventional hybrid of drag,

mime and song and dance, and became one of

Londons most respected dance teachers, working
out of his studio in Floral Street.
Mick Farren, future underground scenester and
member of The Deviants, painted backdrops for
Kemp along with fellow former students of the
Saint Martins school of art. He liked Kemp, but
along with many friends, found Kemps scene
intimidating, it was a bit like going into the
Warhol Factory, if you wanted to hang out you had
to learn heavy manners. And David came in,
learning moves. He was clearly absorbing a lot
mutating.
Kemp in person is engaging and sweet rather
than intimidating, his natural extravagance
revelling in extraordinary yarns that vary with the
telling, as he readily admits. Kemp fell in love
with David the first afternoon they spent together,
when the dancer spent his time enthusing over his
passions, which included, The theatre, the music
hall, silent movies, the Oriental and ritualistic
theatre, Kabuki, Jean Genet, the Theatre of the
Absurd. As yet their interests hardly overlapped;

it was Davids great sense of humour that sealed

their relationship, and they would spend much of
their time trading impersonations of music-hall
stars, or movie icons like Laurel and Hardy.
Kemp says it was a love affair, as well as a
working relationship. Within the first few days,
David took Lindsay to the Tibetan Society and
later David suggested a title for a new work,
Pierrot in Turquoise , on which they would
collaborate: Turquoise is the Buddhist symbol for
everlasting-ness. And of course I wore turquoise
costumes, as a nineteenth-century-inspired clown.
As plans developed for the Pierrot show, David
attended dance lessons at Floral Street. In those
days, said Kemp, he wasnt a very good mover,
but he was equipped with the essential thing: a
desire to move. And I taught him to exteriorise, to
reveal his soul. And he had all this inside him,
anyway.
Sadly, no complete record exists of the show
that Kemp and director Craig Van Roque crafted,
based around the ancient tale of Pierrot and
Harlequin, with a modern, anarchic slant. The

press reviews of the time suggest that the

performance was less than the sum of its parts, but
that the parts were beguiling. Bowie played
Cloud, who as well as singing, observed or
commented on events in Brechtian fashion: he
contributed Columbine, one of the finest songs of
his folk-rock period, simple and elegant,
Threepenny Pierrot, a variant of London Bye Ta
Ta and, in the early version, Maids of Mayfair
A real craftsmans song, says Kemps musical
collaborator Gordon Rose, who would later take
over as MD at the Palladium. I can still remember
it it had a theme, a chord sequence and a good
hook.
The plot revolved around Pierrots unrequited
love for Columbine, who is seduced by Jack
Birketts Harlequin. The most memorable scene
was Aimez-Vous Bach, which depicted Pierrots
despair: the lovelorn character cuts open his belly,
throws out his heart and dances away using his
entrails as a skipping rope; meanwhile, pianist
Michael Garrett improvises around Bachs French
Suites. Often Kemp would extend the scene well

beyond its normal duration, basking in the

attention.
The tiny troupe hustled gigs around the country,
sending out letters which Kemp and Garrett
dictated while the partially sighted Birkett bashed
away at a typewriter. Oxford Playhouse on 28
December, 1967, was the first, followed by three
nights at Whitehavens Rosehill Theatre, a jewellike confection built in a converted barn on the
grounds of an eighteenth-century house owned by
arts patron Miki Sekers.
Sekers was an Hungarian immigrant whod
founded a celebrated textile company, which made
parachutes as well as the silk for Princess
Margarets wedding dress. The textile magnate
also donated the silk with which Russian designer
Natasha Korniloff crafted the shows brightly hued
costumes. Korniloff was also the member of the
troupe with a drivers licence; only just tall enough
to see over the wheel, she was charged with
coaxing their overloaded van, packed with the
gang and their costumes, from Oxford up to
Cumbria for the run of shows.

According to Lindsay Kemp, Rosehill was also

the scene of an hilarious imbroglio that played out
in the farmhouse which they took over. Nestled in a
draughty four-poster bed, Kemp heard noises
through the wall. Venturing into the cold night, he
discovered Bowie cuddling Natasha. I was
traumatised, says Kemp. Totally destroyed.
Kemp does admit that a well-publicised
subsequent suicide attempt was theatrical an
attempt to slash his wrists which produced only
surface wounds. Some of those stories are
exaggerated. And Ive given several versions.
One of those stories has his blood drenching his
costume in that nights performance, ensuring
rapturous applause from the crowd. Pianist
Michael Garrett remembers that at one point during
the evening, Kemp sat on the edge of the stage,
holding the audience rapt with a long soliloquy,
inspired by his star-crossed love affair. Kemp and
Korniloff were both united in their anger and grief
at their two-timing lover, and in their grief: We
cried on each others shoulders, says Kemp. The
treacherous Cloud was then forced to sleep on a

chaise longue in the hall for the next two nights

(the poor sod). Despite such backstage
shenanigans, says Michael Garrett who was also
besotted with Natasha the attitude, in sterling
showbiz fashion, was always that the show must go
on. Lindsay was always having affairs with a
member of the cast, and there were always
arguments and fights. David was actually a
gentleman. In any case, we would always go onstage sozzled which helped.
With the short run of dates finished, the cast
dispersed; David would continue to drop in on
Lindsay at Floral Street. Time, the great healer, did
its work and eventually the dancers bruised heart
began to recover sufficiently for him to continue
working with David for more performances in
March.
Although hed largely kept his distance from
psychedelia in 1967, David was content to drift
along in its slipstream in 1968. He immersed
himself in the underground scene, hanging out with
characters like Lesley Duncan the striking, dark-

haired songwriter and backing vocalist who later

sang on Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon and
Jeff Dexter at Lesleys top-floor flat on Redington
Road, which offered a breathtaking panoramic
view of Hampstead Heath. For a few weeks they
had a regular Thursday night flying saucer
meditation session where, says Dexter, We hoped
the flying saucers would come and take us away.
During such late-night, consciousness-expanding
sessions, David would take any spliffs handed
around, although he wasnt a committed dope
smoker; photographer Ray Stevenson noticed his
tendency to hold the joint for a bit and then pass
it on. According to The Lower Third, hed
boasted that he was first turned on to grass by
Donovan, and had encountered amazing visions,
but his drug of choice remained conventional
cigarettes, at least a pack a day. During the heyday
of acid, David rarely, if ever, turned on at least,
not with the aid of LSD. As Jeff Dexter recalls, he
assumed that everyone present at their evening
saucer sweeps was into psychedelics, but I
discovered many years later lots of people who I

thought were psychedelicised with me werent.

The sessions at Redington Road included
meditation based on Tibetan Buddhism, and the
participants, including David, had the idea that we
could all communicate with other worlds, says
Dexter. Some observers, including Ken Pitt,
suggest Davids fascination with Buddhism mainly
involved burning a couple of joss sticks; yet David
had studied Buddhism with dedication, visiting
Tibet House to meet the Lama Chime Rinpoche.
His fascination with Tibet also inspired the stately,
translucent song Silly Boy Blue which, while
obviously influenced by Walk on By, boasted
one of the most beautiful melodies of his Deram
album. While he was never a full-blown devotee,
Davids Buddhist credentials, says Jeff Dexter,
were convincing. When I first went to Samye
Ling, the monastery up in Scotland, hed already
made an impression with the head monk, Chogyam
Trungpa Rinpoche. And he signed the visitors
book before me so he already had more than a
couple of joss sticks. Other friends, like Ray
Stevenson, remember real anger at Chinas

treatment of Tibetan monks. He told me all about

Chime, and the atrocities that were inflicted I
remember that anger, it stayed with me.
Some of Davids interest in Buddhism, it turned
out, was stimulated by a new figure in his life:
Hermione Farthingale. Lindsay Kemp had
recommended the classy, sweet, red-haired dancer,
along with David and a couple of others, for walkon parts in The Pistol Shot, part of the BBC drama
series Line 625, which was recorded in January
and broadcast on 20 May, 1968. Bowie and
Hermione both had minor roles dancing a minuet
together in period costume, which was enough to
spark a relationship, much to Kemps chagrin,
because I still had hopes. Although Hermione was
a wonderful girl, I must admit.
Davids relationship with Hermione would
mark what his friends saw as a transformation in
his outlook; he was relaxed, almost playful.
Hermione was upper class her father was a
solicitor in Edenbridge relatively conservative,
quiet and sensitive, says her flatmate Vernon
Dewhurst. She was a lovely girl, quite intense,

and quite serious, compared to David. They made

a sweet couple; Hermione the more selfconsciously intellectual, David the joker. He didnt
strike anyone as particularly bookish or highbrow
generally, he was simply a laugh, with a good
sense of humour, always joking.
By August 1968, the pair set up flat together at
22 Clareville Grove, just off the Old Brompton
Road, an elegant street in South Kensington filled
with upmarket shops and clubs. The refined but
cosy three-storey Georgian house belonged to
boutique-owner Breege Collins. Her boyfriend
Tom was a literary, Henry Miller type;
photographer Vernon Dewhurst rented a back room
along with his girlfriend, model and future Bond
Girl Zara Hussein; another couple had
conventional office jobs and David and Hermione
rented the first floor. The place always smelt
nice, according to Ray Stevenson. You could tell
it was mostly girls lived there. Hermiones sense
of style was evident in the Lloyd Loom chair, a
vase of dried grasses in the cast-iron fireplace,
lace on the bed head, and hessian cushions on the

floor.
For nearly six months, in this cosy little setting,
David seemed uncharacteristically at ease, content.
His songs from that time In the Heat of the
Morning, Karma Man were generally elegant,
like his surroundings. By sheer hard work and
ambition, he had begun to turn himself into a
craftsman. David continued to experiment with
new songs, although it was obvious his career was
lagging behind Marc Bolan, who had finally
lodged himself in the public consciousness with
the Visconti-produced Deborah, which reached
number thirty-four that May. Bolan kept it basic:
rock n roll with some clever word-play and a
Donovan yodel. He had achieved something vital;
his music was memorable and distinctive. Four
years into his recording career, it seemed doubtful
that David would ever manage this feat. Although
living with Hermione had rubbed off much of his
competitive aggression, Marcs success still
rankled. Oh yeah! Boley struck it big, and we
were all green with envy. It was terrible; we fell
out for about six months. It was [sulky mutter],

Hes doing much better than I am. And he got all

sniffy about us who were down in the basement.
But we got over that.
For all his pangs of jealousy, though, David
could be proprietorial, happy for his ex-Mod mate,
they were like brothers, says Ray Stevenson. It
was a good rivalry, says Jeff Dexter, young
blokes rivalry. The two were remarkably
similar: fey and boyish, confident and flirtatious
and exceptionally talkative. David could expound
on a wide variety of subjects compared to Marc,
says Stevenson, who points out that Marcs
favourite topic was probably himself. David often
talked Marc up to his friends, and when Bolan was
preparing his debut album, Bowie suggested
George Underwood, whod now turned to art
rather than music to make a living, for the artwork.
When the album was a hit, Bowie seemed pleased:
it marked a calmer, less competitive side of his
character, inspired primarily by Hermione.
Bolan, too, enthused about David to his friends,
telling them hed given him an instrument hed
been toying with, the Stylophone, a toy keyboard

played with a stylus that features two buzzy

synthesiser waveforms and a groovy wood-grained
plastic case (Visconti remembers the quirky plastic
gadget was actually a gift from Ken Pitt). But there
was jealousy there, too; according to Tony
Visconti, when David supported Tyrannosaurus
Rex at a Middle Earth show on 19 May, Bolan
insisted Bowie should not sing; instead, David
improvised Yet-San and the Eagle, a mime based
on Chinas invasion of Tibet, set to a tape of Silly
Boy Blue a performance that, as MC Jeff Dexter
observes, takes a lot of front and was lapped up
by the audience, bar a couple of noisy Maoists.
By the autumn of 1968, Ken Pitt was gradually
being excluded from Clareville Groves cosy little
scene; his task, it seemed, was fielding letters from
Haywood Jones, who was wondering if his son
would ever make a living wage from his music.
Pitt and Jones had discussed whether the cabaret
scene might provide the solution for Davids lack
of money. The suggestion, says Pitt, came from
Haywood and was agreed to by David. Pitt helped
Bowie rehearse a routine that included performing

some of his own songs to a taped backing, intersong patter and in a poignantly ludicrous detail
props in the form of four cut-out Beatles.
However, the idea was still-born one agent who
witnessed a run-through told Pitt, Its a great act,
but where can I book it? Its too good.
For Bowie and Visconti, the still-born move
into cabaret came to epitomise Pitts out-of-touch,
old-school attitude; the growing back biting
between the Pitt and Visconti camps would
anticipate many such battles in Davids career. In
the absence of any clear direction from David
himself, Pitt also continued investigating openings
for acting jobs, while also hoping to advance
Bowies musical career with a promotional film
based around some of his recent material,
including Let Me Sleep Beside You. In the
meantime, David paid the bills by starting work at
Legastat, a photo copy shop frequented by lawyers
and barristers near Londons High Court.
With the cabaret idea abandoned, David turned
his attention once more to the underground
movement; after placing an ad in its house journal,

The International Times, he recruited Tony Hill

previously guitarist with The Misunderstood to
team up with him and Hermione. Named
Turquoise, the multimedia trio performed their
first show at the Roundhouse on 14 September; for
their second show, they renamed themselves
Feathers. Hill was unenthused by the trio and left
after three shows to form his own band, High Tide.
Fortunately the indefatigable Hutch, Davids
companion from The Buzz, had left his latest job,
in Canada, and returned to London. With a new
taste for folk music, a day job as draughtsman for a
refrigeration company in Hornsey (which meant he
didnt need paying), and his down-to-earth
Yorkshire demeanour, he was a better fit for the
band than Hill, and found David more congenial
than in the old days, too. He was happy and
relaxed, which Id never really seen in The Buzz
probably down to Ralph, whose trousers and
everything else were too tight. David had come out
of that and was happy with Hermione.
The music, too, was more spontaneous, worked
out on the top floor at Clareville Grove, with

Hutch on his Harmony six-string acoustic, David

on his Gibson twelve-string. David was still
searching out new music, absorbing Hutchs new
influences, like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell,
picked up in Canada, while Bowie turned Hutch on
to a new obsession, Jacques Brel.
Bowie had first heard Brels songs during the
period when he was besotted with Lesley Duncan,
hanging around her Redington Road flat. Theyd
briefly enjoyed what David describes as an onagain, off-again relationship; Lesley had recently
had a fling with Scott Walker and had the
distressing habit of playing Scotts songs whenever
David was round at her flat. Initially offended,
Bowie became intrigued by the Jacques Brel songs
that Walker was singing; once his jealousy
subsided he became first a fan of Walker, but more
crucially he became obsessed with Brel. When
Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris Eric
Blau and Mort Shumans Greenwich Village show
based on Brels songs came to London later in
1968, David was in the audience. Hutch spent
many evenings at Clareville Grove working out the

chords for the Brel songs Port of Amsterdam and

Next, which they incorporated into their
repertoire.
The new trio played their first multimedia
show together at Hampsteads Country Club on 17
November; one wonders if, as he floated across
the stage during the bands naive, almost child-like
performance, David recalled his music and
movement classes from Burnt Ash primary school.
David and Hermiones mini-ballet was performed
to a spoken-word piece, played on a cassette
recorder. David performed a solo mime, The
Mask, with a similar taped backing, while Hutch,
persuaded he had to perform a spoken-word piece,
settled for Love on a Bus, by Liverpool poet
Roger McGough: at least he was a Northerner.
For all the so-called experimentation of
Londons underground scene, most audiences were
confused or unmoved by Feathers performances.
Their recordings show why. In October, Visconti
managed to wangle a session at Trident Studios,
funded by Essex Music, to record The Ching-aLing Song. A piece of child-like whimsy with

lyrics about azure clouds and crystal girls, it

seemed an unsuccessful attempt to ape Marc
Bolan. The best that could be said about this
lightweight ditty is that it anticipated the summer
jug-band feel of future hits like The Mixtures
Pushbike Song. Perhaps the songs blandness can
be explained with the theory that domestic harmony
doesnt usually inspire great works of art. In which
case a solution was imminent.
With its low ceilings and creaking floorboards,
Clareville Grove was not conducive to privacy,
and towards the end of 1968 flatmate Vernon
Dewhurst heard two sounds emanating from David
and Hermiones room. One was the frequent
arguments between the two. The other was a new
song that David was working out. He showed it to
Hutch within a couple of days, by which time hed
already thought of overlaying its claustrophobic
chords with the sinister, comic buzz of his
Stylophone and completed most of the lyrics,
which opened with the words, Ground Control to
Major Tom. He was immensely proud of it, says

Dewhurst, one of the first few people to hear the

new song, but I remember laughing about the
Stylophone.
Space Oddity was born fully-formed, and
although it has been said that Hutch wrote the
opening chord sequence, he points out that he
merely changed some chord shapes, to add to the
songs ethereal, disjointed feel. The songs
distinctive harmonic structure was defined by
Davids limited, unconventional guitar style, while
its lyrics were tightly plotted. In fact, the piece
was not organised like a song, with verses,
choruses and a middle eight: it was more like a
work of drama. David describes the song as
arriving almost instantaneously, inspired by his
trip to see Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space
Odyssey. I went stoned out of my mind to see the
movie and it really freaked me out, especially the
trip passage. For the first time, this was a song
that had arrived without conscious effort, or
attempt to mimic others the first song that derived
from the unconscious, rather than ambition.
As Hutch learned the song and worked out a

harmony vocal, two points struck him, as they

strike todays listener; the simplicity of the
melody, and the complexity of the songs structure.
The main melody, accentuated by the Stylophone,
is two notes, a semitone apart; the most
claustrophobic melody possible, the perfect
metaphor for the narrators isolation. Meanwhile,
the songs structure is arranged exactly as a play
script, with the simplest of chords anchoring the
basic opening dialogue, while the melody and
chords become more expansive as the story
unfolds, and Major Tom steps into the void. As
Hutch observes, Most musicians make songs with
a structure that has been used before his songs
have a structure he dreams up for himself.
While its the words that have drawn most
attention on this song, its the harmonic structure
that renders it extraordinary. Each chord change
manipulates the mood as Ground Control tells the
Major hes made the grade, the chord swerves
from the opening lines minor to a cheerily
optimistic major, a psychological judder that tells
us of the disconnect between ground control and

their astronaut. Its a consummate piece of

songwriting, the first evidence that Bowie might
indeed be the genius hed said he was, two years
before.
An additional surreal frisson has been added by
the interesting suggestion, made by writer Nicholas
Pegg and others, that the heros name was inspired
by Tom Major, a failed trapeze artist from Brixton,
whose unlikely career became celebrated when his
son, John Major, became the British Prime
Minister in 1990. Sadly, the intriguing possibility
that a poster for Tom Majors circus act lodged
itself in the young David Joness memory is
impossibly remote for Tom Major retired from
showbiz two decades before Davids birth, in
order to make garden gnomes (and must therefore
have influenced a far less revered Bowie song).
Space Odditys sense of numbness and
alienation has also inspired speculation that its
genesis involved heroin rumours encouraged by
David in the mid-seventies, when he was playing
up his image as a long-term druggie. Those close
to him at the time including Ray Stevenson,

whose brother Nils would later succumb to heroin

addiction dismiss the idea. I dont think David
and Hermione were even into smoking dope, says
Hutch. They were into white wine. There was a
side of the scene with a lot of sitting in basements
and getting wasted, but not those two. Even
Davids own account of watching Kubricks 2001
stoned on grass doesnt tally with the recollections
of people like Tony Visconti, who remember him
coughing and spluttering when inhaling a joint.
Instead, the bleakness of the song seems primarily
to have been inspired by his arguments with
Hermione rows immediately noticed by those
around them, who had been genuinely affected by
the feeling of bliss that, along with the smell of
joss sticks, permeated the elegant Georgian
hallways of Clareville Grove. That feeling of
contentment, unique in Davids life so far, would
not reoccur for many years. Its loss marked his rise
to the star status hed craved for so long.
According to Ken Pitt, Davids new song
surfaced after he had asked David to write a
special piece of new material for a promotional

film hed been planning in the hope of getting

David exposure on German or British television.
Filmed on Hampstead Heath and at Clarence Film
Studio on Deptford Creek, the film featured nine
segments, including the trio performing Ching-aLing, an overdubbed Sell Me a Coat, and a
mimed Let Me Sleep Beside You. The most
historically significant section included a studio
version of Space Oddity, with David contributing
a kooky solo on the ocarina. The footage is
marvellously camp, all the more so for the wig
which David sports, after a hair cut hed
undergone for a tiny TV role in The Virgin
Soldiers. Bowie puts his dance training to use
simulating weightlessness, before succumbing to
the embraces of a pair of space nymphettes.
Without a doubt, the most bizarre curio of the
promo film was Davids mime of The Mask, for
which he wears Elizabethan-style white tights,
which flatter his pert buttocks and well-packed
codpiece. (The Mask was always Ken Pitts
favourite, observes Hutch, tartly.) To his own
voiceover, he mimes the tale of a boy who finds a

mask in a junk shop, puts it on and finds it holds

the secret of fame; and then at the climax, as the
hero performs at the Palladium, the mask strangles
him.
The short, hilarious film was both gauche and
prescient: even as David Bowie attempts to court
fame in an almost Variety-style performance, he
anticipates its corrosive effects. That ambivalence
would be reflected in the months that followed, as
he finally achieved the fame for which hed
hungered. As the film revealed, few other artists
were as conscious of the duality of fame as David
Bowie. Fewer still, once the fame from that first
hit had ebbed away, would find themselves even
more addicted.

6
Check Ignition
David was adored on all sides. He has
to be in that situation, to get ahead. You
could call it manipulation, but what the
hell.
Calvin Lee

As 1968 turned to 1969, hippie unity was

splintering for ever. Idealism and whimsy were
being shouldered aside by a wave of denim-clad,
blues-riffin musos preaching a gospel of
authenticity. As bands like Led Zeppelin and Free
exploded onto the scene, the elfin, languid 1969
David Bowie was just as out-of-sync with this new
dress-down era as hed been in his previous
Anthony Newley mode. During that disastrous era

hed been powered forward by a brash, luminous

confidence, and some artful, unfocused songs. This
time around, that youthful confidence had been
battered. But he had one crucial factor in his
favour: a copper-bottomed classic song, Space
Oddity. It was his ace in the hole, and he played it
with a new subtlety.
Over these months more acquaintances noticed
traits that would become characteristic of the
twenty-something David Bowie: the way hed
earnestly quiz other people, finding out how they
ticked, how hed search out allies and file them in
his mental Rolodex for future use, without
mentioning them to his current friends. Often, he
seemed strangely passive, leaving decisions to
others, content to bury his still-bruised ego. As one
friend, musician and International Times writer
Mick Farren puts it, You got the feeling he didnt
want to show his cards because he didnt have
many to begin with.
Those who fell out with David in later years
often described his behaviour, from this period on,
as cold and manipulative; in reality, although

unusually secretive, he was easygoing, following

the flow, simply taking advantage of random
opportunities. One such chance came when he was
visiting Barrie Jackson, an old Bromley friend,
whod moved down the road to Foxgrove Road in
Beckenham. Hearing music drifting from the top
flat, Mary Finnigan, another tenant of the same
building who was sunbathing out in the garden,
called out, Whos playing?
A few moments later, David came downstairs to
share the sunshine and, says Finnigan, the tincture
of cannabis she was enjoying. A week or so later,
on 14 April, 1969, David moved in to stay with
Mary and her two children at 24 Foxgrove Road.
His friends had only just noticed the absence of
Hermione, who David told them had left for New
York. They missed Davids elegant, red-haired
companion, but were impressed by how quickly
hed lined up a replacement. We were very
jealous, says Davids friend Ray Stevenson, he
never had to pay any rent.
Mary Finnigan had an impeccably middle-class
background, but after a brush with the law and

conviction for drugs possession ultimately overtuned with a consequent brief stretch in
Holloway Prison in 1967, she had taken up the
hippie cause as a writer for International Times.
She and David soon became lovers, and the singer
became her new cause; within three weeks she had
helped organise a regular Folk Club at the Three
Tuns on Beckenham High Street; by its fourth
week, on Sunday 25 May, the venture was titled
the Beckenham Arts Lab, and eventually started
drawing in street musicians, puppeteers, poets and
other artists. Working with the eclectic group of
volunteers, David immersed himself in mime and
the visual arts, as well as music. The group
became his main focus of activity, soon after his
partnership with Hutch came to an end. The
Yorkshireman had spent many intense evenings
throughout the spring working on material with
David after a long day in the office. In April, when
a hoped-for deal with Atlantic for the duo failed to
materialise, Hutch returned up north, in search of a
decent salary to support his wife and young son.
David seemed unconcerned, but later Hutch heard

hed been telling his friends, Hutch thought we

were never going to make it. It seemed, Hutch
thought, that David simply had no grasp of the
concept of having a family to feed.
With Hutchs departure, David immersed
himself in Arts Lab meetings. The group boasted
two formidable administrators in the form of
Finnigan and Nita Bowes later an adviser to
Tony Blair, and daughter-in-law to Tony Benn
who pursued government grants and talked of
setting up a countrywide network of arts
organisations. The pair would dominate their
debates; David more quietly spoken but earnest
and thoughtful, as happy talking about puppeteers
and street theatre as about music. According to
Keith Christmas, one of the main musical draws
along with David, the audiences motivations were
not as high-falutin as the organisers. It was a
terrific gig from day one. Because the pub looked
quite normal from the front, but at the back was a
large room and conservatory, with its own
entrance. So people could get down there and get
off their faces in the warm evenings.

Throughout the Art Lab period, Davids talk

was peppered with fashionable underground
sentiments; yet a few people close to him at the
time wondered how profound his conversion to the
cause was. Alan Mair is one of several who were
not 100 per cent sure about the hippie trippie
thing. I thought his mind was somewhere else. But
Davids hippie collectivism and talk of being off
his face did at least signal his independence from
Ken Pitt who viewed such attitudes with
abhorrence. Keith Christmas, later a leading light
of the folk revival spearheaded by Fairport
Convention and others, was certain that Bowie
was a fellow traveller, although not necessarily for
cynical reasons. He recognised there were groovy
people and he liked groovy interesting people.
And he knew that most of the big talent was making
acoustic music, so he wasnt slow to have a go.
For David Bowie, the hippie movement
represented a seam of inspiration to be mined,
rather than a guiding philosophy. Even while he
was taking his foot off the career accelerator, at
heart he remained a traditional entertainer. Space

Oddity, a highlight of his Three Tuns set,

embodied this contradiction. It would be the
perfect sixties anthem, with its trendy sci-fi theme
and rejection of materialism. Yet, as friends like
Tony Visconti believed, it was a gimmick song,
just like Joe Meeks Telstar, and to get it
released, David would have to indulge in plenty of
old-school, music-biz networking.
Fortunately, David had fallen in with one of
Londons finest networkers back in June 1967, at a
party in New Bond Street. Calvin Mark Lee was a
doctor in pharmacology, whod won a grant to
pursue postgraduate research under the
internationally renowned Professor Arnold Beckett
in 1963. Deciding his criteria for meeting people
were that they be beautiful, creative and
intelligent, and that scientists rarely ticked all
three boxes, Lees new project would be Swinging
London. Soon the thirty-three-year-olds social
circle included Lionel Bart, fashion boutique
Dandy Fashions John Crittle, acid king Stan
Owsley, Monkee Mike Nesmith and Jimi Hendrix.
The influential, wayward folk singer Anne Briggs

was briefly his girlfriend, and a wall of photos,

many naked, in his Kings Road flat diarised his
eclectic social and sexual acquaintances. If that
were not enough to mark his exotic status, Calvin
Lee wore on his forehead a glittery plastic disk a
diffraction grating, which shimmered in the light
like a hologram which proclaimed his starchild
credentials, as it would Ziggy Stardusts a few
years later.
Lee had met David at a reception at Chappell
Music Publishers three weeks after the release of
his Deram album in 1967. From early 1969, when
Lee was given an expense account by Mercury
Records and a role as Head of Promotions for the
label, he became an integral part of Davids social
scene, which was now fiendishly complicated. Lee
explains, David was adored on all sides. You
have Ken, you have me, you have Hermione. So
there were certain amounts of jealousy. The two,
says Lee, shared a sexual relationship that was
remarkable partly for its brevity. He remembers
Davids incessant, crippling headaches, which he
believes were brought on by all these various

tensions. Today, he wonders if Davids flirtation

with him was partly driven by ambition. He has to
be in that situation otherwise you dont get ahead.
You could call it manipulation, but what the hell.
Still, Calvin understood Davids music, and he
was one of the first to hear Space Oddity. He
considered it other-worldly, in every sense, and
set about a mission to clandestinely push David
Bowie.
Lee had an ally at Mercury named Simon Hayes,
who had come to the labels attention as manager
of The Fool the London design collective that
Mercury had, in a bizarre move, signed on the
basis that theyd painted John Lennons Rolls
Royce and were therefore the next best thing to
having The Beatles themselves. Hayes negotiated
the bands deal with Mercury before being offered
the job of Head of International A&R by the
companys co-founder, Irving Green, in January
1969. Hayes and Lee knew each other from the
London fashion and art scene, and according to
Hayes, Lee was really on the case with Space
Oddity, a total convert. He wanted to sign David

 and I said, Fantastic idea. David Bowie

would be his first major signing.
The process, however, was fraught with
complications, thanks to the labyrinthine corporate
and internal politics of the Mercury Philips
empire: an organisation described by Philips
manager Olav Wyper as a disaster. The UK arm,
Philips, was a joint venture between Mercury USA
and the Dutch electronics conglomerate; the
American company also retained its own London
office, overseen by Lou Reizner.
Reizner had his own musical ambitions; his
best-known achievements would be overseeing the
soundtrack for The Whos Tommy and the
disastrous All This and World War II , which set
Beatles covers to black-and-white wartime cine
footage. He also fancied himself as a singer and
saw Bowie as a rival, which meant Calvin Lee had
to work surreptitiously to advance his friends
career.

Lambeth Archives
Our playground. Boys playing in
cleared bombsites in Lambeth, 1947, ten
minutes from David Jones birthplace.
Brixton was a prime target for Nazi
terror weapons, thanks to British
duplicity. Bombed-out buildings were

omnipresent and ideal for adventures.

Roger Bolden
Stansfield Road, Davids street. No
garden fences, no cars and kids like
Davids neighbours Graham Stevens,
Leslie Burgess and (right) Roger Bolden
could wander unhindered.

Pictorial Press
Always well scrubbed, with clean
fingernails. The polite, neatly dressed
David Jones, 1955, a year after the
familys move to Bromley.

Max Batten
Burnt Ash Juniors football team with
eleven-year-old David Jones (middle
row, far left) and his friends Chris
Britton (two to his right) and Max Batten

(bottom right). Bright, with oodles of

personality, he was already a favourite
of the schools headmaster and was fast
learning how to deploy his charm as a
weapon.

John Barrance
John Barrance
David, 1962, in his final year at Bromley
Tech (left), and his best friend and
bandmate George Underwood the boy
who damaged Davids eye in a
schoolboy fight. Both aspiring rock n
rollers were well known at the Tech, but
the dark-haired, outgoing Underwood
was more popular: Everyone thought he
was going to be big, says school friend

Roger Bevan.

Pictorial Press
The Kon-Rads initially George
Underwoods band in late 1962 or
early 1963. David is on tenor sax, left.
He just wanted to be part of show
business. You could feel it, says

drummer David Hadfield.

Dezo Hoffmann/Rex Features

The King Bees, May, 1964. David
standing with, from left, Roger Bluck,
Bob Allen, Dave Howard and George
Underwood. Their single, Liza Jane,
must count as one of the least auspicious
debuts by a noted rock star. I had real
trouble getting it even released, says

manager Les Conn. When it flopped,

Davie Jones abandoned George, who
went on, initially, to greater success.

Bob Solly
The Manish Boys: tough, horn-based
blues; nomad lifestyle. From left, Woolf
Byrne, John Watson, David Jones, Paul
Rodriguez, Mick Whitehead, Johnny
Flux, Bob Solly. Their green van was
covered with lipstick messages from

girls most of them dedicated to David.

Denis Taylor
David with The Lower Third at the
Radio London Inecto show (bassist

Graham Rivens is on the left). Thered

be six girls at the front of the Marquee
and half a dozen of us queens at the back,
watching his every move, says one
regular.

Denis Taylor
The newly christened David Bowie
poses with Phil May and Brian
Pendleton, singer and guitarist in The

Pretty Things, plus Lower Third guitarist

Denis Taylor (me) and drummer Phil
Lancaster.

Les Conn
He was brash, sure he was going to
make it. Davids first manager, Les
Conn, pictured with him in London,
April, 1994, was crucial to his first two
record deals. Conn was also an early
supporter of Mark Feld the future Marc
Bolan.

Denis Taylor
A rare photo of Davids second
manager, the elusive Ralph Horton
(extreme right, glasses). Devoted to his
charge, Horton also set out to split him
from his band, The Lower Third.

Ken Pitt
Ken Pitt (in glasses) the manager who
oversaw Bowies career from obscurity
to his first hit with The Mark Leeman
Five (singer Roger Peacock, far right)
shortly before he took over Davids
career. He had the right instincts, says

one client, but others considered him too

gentlemanly for the cut-throat 1970s.

Dezo Hoffmann/ Rex Features

The most magical person. David
Bowie, June, 1967 capable of
inspiring near obsession in experienced
record company execs, but not as
inspiring when it came to delivering a
hit.

Bob Flag

The Riot Squad, April, 1967. Clockwise

from top left: Del Roll, David, Butch
Davis, Rod Davis, Bob Flag and Croak
Prebble. Davids short, obscure tenure
with the band showed, for the first time,
his ability to take risks (and to cover Lou
Reed).

Ray Stevenson

See my friends: by 1968 David Bowie

had acquired the knack of surrounding
himself with inspiring people. Above,
with girlfriend Hermione Farthingale
(left), newly acquired producer Tony
Visconti and (far right) Hutch the
guitarist with whom hed cut his first
version of Space Oddity.

Jeff Dexter
Singer and songwriter Lesley Duncan
with leading Mod-turned-head Jeff
Dexter in early 1968. Duncan was like

an older sister and lover to Bowie,

turning him on to the songs of Jacques
Brel and accompanying him on UFOhunting jaunts over Hampstead Heath.

Ray Stevenson
The Brits sit around whining;
Americans get out there and do things.
Angela Barnett, 21 July, 1969 she had
just stayed up with David to watch the

Apollo 11 moon landings (and, she

insisted, seen aliens in Beckenham).
From the summer of 1969, Angie would
become the dominant force in Davids
life.

David Bebbington

David Bowie, showbiz trouper, plays

his solo slot at the Beckenham Free
Festival, 16 August, 1969, just five days
after the funeral of his father, Haywood.
His ace in the hole, the single Space
Oddity, had vanished after a brief
appearance in the charts, but six weeks
later it would start climbing once more.

Reizners dislike of Bowie would soon be

intensified by another figure in the web of
relationships that surrounded the singer. An
American girlfriend of the Mercury exec, who was
also involved with Calvin Lee, had declared her
fascination with David Bowie after accompanying
Reizner and Lee to a Feathers show at the
Roundhouse in January 1969. Her name was
Angela Barnett.
As Mark Pritchett, a long-term friend of David
Bowies, puts it: Angela Barnett was a
complicated character at the time let alone now.
Pritchetts description is as apt as anyones. In
future years, Angela Barnett, who had arrived in
London in the summer of 1966 to study at
secretarial college and later enrolled at Kingston
Polytechnic, would claim to be a key figure in
securing David Bowies new record deal. In fact,
the key figures in the signing, notably Simon
Hayes, remember Angies involvement as
peripheral in this early stage but she would
become a prime mover in almost every aspect of
his career for the next four years.

In 1975, David Bowie would tell writer (and

later film director) Cameron Crowe that he met his
future wife because we were both going out with
the same man. The guy was Calvin Lee, and
Bowies boasts about his own bisexuality would
become a key element in his public persona. Angie
was the co-creator of this persona, yet her
contribution to Davids career went much further.
From the moment she appeared on the scene,
following her first date with Bowie on 30 May,
1969, Angela Barnett electrified everyone around
her. For, as Ray Stevenson puts it, She was a bit
of spunk. She was American. The English sit
around whining; Americans get out there and do
things.
The couple first met over a Chinese meal with
Calvin Lee and on his expense account after
which the trio carried on partying at the Speakeasy,
where King Crimson were playing one of their first
London shows. As they sat, talking and flirting,
Angie thought the Mercury promotions man was
trying to serve her up as a kind of sexual delicacy
for the singer hed helped sign. Angie dominated

the conversation, as was her habit, while Davids

remarks were mostly drily amused, savouring the
electric atmosphere; the two even looked quite
similar, with their clear skin and almost elfin
features. That night, David returned with Angie to
her tiny flat above a travel agents in Paddington.
It was on a morning shortly after this that Angie
and David first mapped out the pattern they would
follow during their time together. She knew full
well from the outset that he was like an alley cat
but nonetheless succumbed to a bout of jealousy
or theatricality when he told her he was leaving,
and threw herself down the stairs. According to
Angie, David stepped over her on his way out of
the door without batting an eyelid, and quietly took
his leave.
For the time being, Ken Pitt remained blissfully
unaware of Angela Barnetts existence, and
exchanged letters with Simon Hayes over April
and May 1969, as the Mercury A&R man put
together a deal. With Hayes largely absent in New
York and Chicago, David Platz and Essex Music
took charge of the recording session for the song

that had so impressed Hayes and Lee. Earlier in

the year, Ken Pitt had tried sending a demo of
Space Oddity to George Martin, hoping The
Beatles producer would agree to oversee a Bowie
recording. After chasing him for several weeks,
Pitt eventually found out from Martins secretary
that he was unimpressed. There was a more
surprising knock-back to come from the man
whod produced all of Davids recent material,
namely Tony Visconti.
Today, the stripped-down bleakness of Space
Oddity gives it a certain purity. Yet that purity
belies its origins, for most of those concerned in
releasing it considered it a good song,
distinguished mainly by the marketing opportunity
it represented namely the Apollo moon landing
scheduled for late that July. It was a good gimmick.
According to Simon Hayes, the notion that the
single would tie in with that Julys moonshot was
what drove the signing. Everybody was always
looking for a hook that was it.
Even while Tony Visconti threw himself into
planning the album that would follow Space

Oddity, he disliked the song itself. I didnt like

the idea of capitalising on the man on the moon, he
says today. I thought it was a cheap shot. For a
principled hippie, Viscontis celebrated distaste
for the song made sense at the time, though today
he concedes, Ive grown to like it a bit.
Meanwhile, having rejected the song, he would
help ensure its eventual success by suggesting
several of the key figures in its recording a role
he would adopt for many subsequent David Bowie
works, even ones that did not bear his name.
The imminent Apollo launch meant that
contractual negotiations, and the session, needed
tying up quickly. Gus Dudgeon, who had recently
joined the Essex empire, worked in the next office
to Visconti, who called him up and suggest he take
over the song. Dudgeon, who knew David well
though their work on the Deram album, thought
Bowies demo of the song was unbelievable. I
couldnt believe my luck. I had to phone Tony just
to make sure he wanted me to do it. He claimed
there was a lot of better stuff on the album, at
which stage Bowie and I sat down and planned the

record every detail of it.

The session was tightly budgeted and
choreographed: Dudgeon sketched out a plan,
adorned with squiggles denoting a Stylophone or
Mellotron part, Visconti suggested guitarist Mick
Wayne and keyboard player Rick Wakeman, then
still at music college, while string arranger Paul
Buckmaster was another Essex contact. Only the
rhythm section were experienced hands drummer
Terry Cox had played with Alexis Korner and
Pentangle, while bassist Herbie Flowers had been
working sessions since hed been talent-spotted by
Paul McCartney in 1967.
The recording session for Space Oddity, on 20
June, 1969, was one of those rare occasions where
everyone involved sensed its historical
importance. According to Gus, When we hit that
studio we knew exactly what we wanted no other
sound would do, although there were happy
accidents that changed the final result. Guitarist
Mick Wayne thought hed finished an early take
and was about to retune a bass string on his Gibson
ES-335, but Dudgeon liked the effect of the

warped note swamped with reverb and told him to

repeat the sound on the next take. Rick Wakeman,
who played the Mellotron, found that it was one
of half a dozen occasions [in my career] where its
made the hair stand up on your neck and you know
youre involved in something special. Space
Oddity was the first time it ever happened to me.
Terry Cox remembers the consensus that a
breakthrough was finally imminent, That
excitement definitely did transmit itself to me, too.
The sense of event was heightened by the
presence of Calvin Lee, waiting to hurry the tape
off for mastering. I remember him coming in and
whipping it off to the factory straight away, says
Dudgeon, thats how things were on that day.
Less than three weeks after the session, the
single had been pressed and was released to an
enthusiastic critical reception; one of the most
welcome reviews came from Penny Valentine in
Disc, who was not only respected, but who also
had a nose for a hit and pronounced that the record
is going to knock everyone senseless.
Outside the perfection of that single session,

though, confusion reigned. In America, Mercury

were sufficiently confident of the singles
prospects to greenlight work on an album, which
started on 20 July. Yet Philips in the UK were
disorganised: with UK MD Leslie Gould under
notice that he was to be replaced, it was Essex
Davids publishers who took control of the
sessions. Planning was nonetheless sketchy;
according to Visconti, the album was mapped out
at a meeting between him, Bowie and David Platz.
As Davids previous album was all over the
place musically, the master-plan was to keep him
on course with one style. Visconti envisaged a
folk-rock sound, based around Davids twelvestring guitar, and suggested using Mick Waynes
band, Juniors Eyes, whom hed recently
produced; they were likeable, younger and less
expensive than the usual session musicians, just a
bunch of blokes he could hang out with, says
guitarist Tim Renwick. The band which Renwick
and drummer John Cambridge had joined only
recently knew little about David, only the
Laughing Gnome, so we didnt know what to

expect.
For his Deram album, David had been confident
in overseeing the music; this time around, it
seemed much of that confidence had been knocked
out of him. During their introductory chat the band
found him kind of nervous and unsure of himself,
says Renwick. He was a bit of an unlikely solo
artist a lot of solo artists are very pushy and
egocentric [but] he wasnt like that at all. David
was strikingly vague about what he wanted. There
was very little direction, says Renwick. It was
odd that there wasnt a figure saying, That worked
that didnt work.
John Cambridge would be David Bowies
drummer for the next nine months; crucial months
in the singers musical development. This was a
time when David, according to legend, was an ice
man: battling inner demons, using and discarding
musicians like worn-out guitar picks. In contrast,
Cambridge found David energetic and jokey, but
not pushy. Instead, he was content to be led, most
notably by his new girlfriend, who became a
permanent fixture that summer.

Visconti, too, while enthusiastic, was reluctant

to take control. I was not a very good producer yet
and I hadnt started to engineer. I had only made
the first Tyrannosaurus Rex album and the Juniors
Eyes album, and his inexperience was noticed by
the band. They all liked him, but thought he was
sort of over polite, says Renwick. The album
which emerged from these seemingly directionless
sessions was not orchestrated; it was busked,
cooked up on the spot, which gave it a delicious
tension. For even as Bowie was turning his back
on hippie values, he was reliant on people like
Mick Wayne who was talented, shambolic and
very druggy to give shape to his vision.
The sessions at Trident Studios, in a little
Soho alleyway were drawn out over the summer
and early autumn. A session would be booked with
no pre-warning of the songs they would be
working on, and the day would start with David
sitting on a high stool with his twelve-string,
saying, Ive got this one. After playing through
the song acoustically a couple of times, hed smile
at the band and ask them, Shall we have a go?

For his acoustic numbers, assisted by Keith

Christmas, the process was even more basic. And
thus David Bowies second album was pieced
together.
The rather shambolic recording which
Visconti describes as personal and warm in many
ways but often ragged would make this album
unique in David Bowies catalogue. His intricately
worked words were set against a loose, hobo
backdrop where, on songs like Unwashed and
Somewhat Slightly Dazed, the results are
obviously influenced by Dylans first electric
sessions. Other obvious touchstones include Tim
Hardin whose crystalline, descending chord
sequences are echoed in both Cygnet Committee
and Wide Eyed Boy From Freecloud or Simon
and Garfunkel, snatches of whose Mrs Robinson
pop up in Letter to Hermione. The overall effect
mirrors the David Bowie that everyone from that
time remembers: intense but passive, intriguing but
introverted.
The lack of direction afflicting David was
entirely explained by his personal life: for as

Visconti explains, Calvin Lee was besotted with

David and his hidden agenda was to have him as
a boyfriend. But Angie, who arrived on the scene
during the recording of the album, squashed all
possibility of that. The business backdrop was
even more chaotic; Calvin Lee was operating in a
semi-official capacity, posting out promo copies of
the single after hours and offering encouragement
at many of the sessions, which were then
interrupted by a nerdy American character, Robin
McBride, from Mercury, says Visconti. [He]
turned up on our doorstep and we were told that
we were all answerable to him. I despised him.
As weeks elapsed after the single release, the
machinations around its creator became more
complex. Before the sessions, David had told
Visconti that Ken Pitt was too old school. After
the record, he stated, Ill be dropping him. Pitt,
meanwhile, pushed the single by sending polite
letters to BBC Radio, Top of the Pops , and other
outlets, augmenting his efforts with an attempt at
chart-rigging in a deal with a shady character, who
offered to massage the single into the Record

Retailer chart for 100. Pitt acceded, ultimately

handing over 140 in total; but the single
languished outside the Top 40. To this day, Pitt
remains slightly shamefaced about the episode;
according to other figures in the industry, Pitts
distaste for getting down and dirty was a crucial
failing. Ken was too gentlemanly, says Olav
Wyper, later general manager of Philips. He
thought the way to make this a hit was to put money
in somebodys pocket. Which wasnt enough.
The American release was even more confused.
Simon Hayes had received an early pressing of
Space Oddity and played it at Mercurys
Wednesday sales conference in Chicago.
Everyone had been excited about the record. But
when they heard it they all said: This is a sad
story about a guy lost in space. And were gonna
release it when theres a space shot happening
and theres a real possibility we could lose a man
in space?
With Mercury presidents Irving Green and Irwin
Steinberg fast losing their nerve, there was a rush
edit, says Hayes, which censored most of the

references to Major Toms fate. It must have made

for a very short record. The single was eventually
released in a modified US edit with absolutely no
promotion behind it, according to Hayes, and it
died a slow death, as these things do.
Blissfully oblivious of all the corporate
machinations, David was genuinely excited as the
moonshot approached on 20 July. He, Angie and
Ray Stevenson stayed up for the TV coverage.
Stevenson found it disappointing, It was dull,
black and white fuzzy footage of people walking
slowly, but observed, David was very excited.
David later described his state as over the moon!
And they used [the single] as part of the
background track I couldnt believe they were
doing that. Did they know what the song was
about?
According to Stevenson, the most memorable
part of the evening was when Angie announced,
Im going out for a walk, and then, on her return,
suddenly shes seen them little green men, and
all this nonsense. Ray was impressed by Angie,
but it was at this point that he started to have

doubts. If David was sceptical, he concealed it.

He humoured her and asked all the questions
that a charming person would.
Amid the mess of people competing for Davids
attention vampires and predators as Ken Pitt
terms them Pitt was especially suspicious of
Angies influence, seeing her presence behind
disturbing aspects of Davids behaviour, including
an attempt in June to negotiate an advance with
publisher David Platz, behind Pitts back. Partly to
re-establish his pre-eminence, Pitt organised a trip
to a pair of music festivals in Malta and Pistoia,
Italy, at the end of July. Bowie would sing When I
Live My Dream, judged sufficiently MOR for
such events, against a backing tape but the main
purpose of the trip, says Pitt, was merely the
prospect of a little fun and sun. Angie dropped in
for the Italian leg of the trip savouring Pitts
suspicious reaction following which David and
Ken returned to London, in Davids case directly
on to a show at the Three Tuns. It was only when
David arrived in Beckenham that he received a
message that his father was ill. He seemed to sense

the situation was serious. Someone else can host

tonight, he yelled at his fellow volunteers, just
get me home.
Ray Stevenson was enlisted to drive David to
Plaistow Grove, where it was obvious that
Haywoods condition was grave; hed been
suffering from lung complaints for some years,
probably linked to his heavy cigarette habit, and
had now succumbed to pneumonia. Sitting down at
the kitchen table with Peggy for endless cups of
tea, Ray found Davids mum was relatively
composed while David was Panicky. It was
obvious he really loved his dad.
David spent most of the next two days at
Plaistow Grove. On 5 August, 1969, he called Pitt
to tell him his father had died. Pitt joined him at the
house, where he sorted through Haywood Jones
papers. They had been left in perfect order. He
was always wonderful, says Pitt. I wish he could
have witnessed Davids success.
John Cambridge, the Juniors Eyes drummer,
was becoming closer to David as the sessions
continued; he speculates that his broad Yorkshire

accent and dry humour reminded David of

Haywood. A few days after his fathers death,
David told John that his phone had rung several
times at 5.30 a.m. Id pick it up and there was no
one there, he told John. I just knew it was my dad
seeing if I was all right.
Poignantly, the most significant live show of
David Bowies life to date came on 16 August, just
five days after Haywoods funeral. The
Beckenham Free Festival had been planned for
several months, and included every member of
Bowies social circle, with the notable exception
of Ken Pitt. Mark Pritchett, who was reading his
poetry on the day, met David early in the morning,
when he was buoyant, fired up by the beautiful
weather and the feverish activity. Short of
microphones, they drove round to Marks house in
Haywood Jones tiny Fiat 500 to borrow some.
Good grief! David laughed as they pulled up on
Southend Road. Ive just taken the lease on the
place opposite well be moving in in three
weeks. Come and see us!
The afternoon was frenzied for all involved.

Even those who like photographer and blues

musician Dave Bebbington thought Davids new
girlfriend was too pushy were impressed by the
way Angie made things happen, selling burgers
from a stall to raise cash. Every Arts Lab member
was busy with some assignment at the Beckenham
Recreation Grounds, whether it was PA, moving
gear, puppet shows or impromptu street theatre
events. The event was endearingly amateurish DJ
John Peel, who was scheduled to MC, was
replaced by a medical student from Blackheath
named Tim Goffe; local bands playing blues or
Chuck Berry numbers dominated the bill, which
included Keith Christmas, Bridget St John and The
Strawbs.
As Davids afternoon performance approached,
however, the mood turned sour, a combination of
stage fright and thinking about his dad, says
Pritchett. Dave Bebbington, who photographed
Davids solo set from on-stage, remembers, There
was little chat in between the songs; you could tell
he was thinking, I have to be a trouper, Im going
to play my set and go home.

For Mary Finnigan, the day had started

stressfully with a missing van and PA; it got worse
that afternoon, when she remembers David calling
her and Lee materialistic assholes as they totted
up the days takings. I dont remember him being
unpleasant, says Bebbington, just detached. He
wanted to go home. David was absent from the
celebratory curry at an Indian restaurant on
Beckenham High Street that night; there were
complaints from some, says Bebbington, that
David [was] being really shitty. Bizarrely, no
one seemed to link his mood with the fact hed
buried his father five days earlier. The bickering,
and the fact that Mary had been supplanted by
Angie as Davids lover and muse, signalled the
end of Davids close involvement with the Arts
Lab, which, for David, had become a place where
everybody wanted a piece of him, says
Bebbington.
When David came to commemorate that sunny
but overclouded Bromley afternoon a few days
later in the recording studio, he was in a sweeter
mood. Charmingly homely, with a tiny

Woolworths reed organ carefully miked up by

Visconti, Memory of a Free Festival would be,
along with Cygnet Committee, a highlight of
David Bowies second album. Where Cygnet
Committee was complex, having evolved out of
an earlier song, Lover to the Dawn its lyrics a
densely argued dissection of hippie values this
song was simple, poignant, and evoked the
ambivalence that had enveloped David that year.
When he sang, Oh to capture just one drop of all
the ecstasy that swept that afternoon, the melody
sweeps upwards with yearning for a hippie
nirvana that others thought they had attained, but
which he knew he hadnt. A jewel of a song, it
ended in the glitzy tinsel of a chorus borrowed
from Hey Jude, a comedown perhaps, but as
Tony Visconti points out, in the shadow of The
Beatles it was hard to have an original idea in
those days.
Memory of a Free Festival, one of the last
songs to be recorded, would close Davids Philips
album, which bizarrely featured the same
eponymous title as its Deram predecessor. It was

an appropriate farewell, bidding goodbye to the

hippie culture and, in several instances, people
that had nurtured Bowie for the last nine months.
Mary Finnigan and Calvin Lee, who left Mercury
later that year, were two more people from whom
David moved on, as he and Angie settled in to
Haddon Hall, the Southend Road house hed
pointed out to Pritchett.
With the confused welter of emotions that
surrounded his fathers death which included
grief, sympathy for his mother, and irritation at the
constant arguments with her its hard to decipher
Bowies feelings at the modest success of his
purported breakthrough single, for in the wake of
the moon landings, Space Oddity slipped into the
UK charts at number forty-eight, on 6 September,
1969, before dropping, seemingly, into oblivion.
For most of the Philips staff, that, it seemed, was
that. But they had not reckoned on Olav Wyper, the
companys newly appointed general manager
young, dynamic and handsome, with an Action Man
jutting jaw that signalled his can-do attitude.

Before joining Philips, Wyper had discussed the

job with his secretary Sue Baxter, whom he
planned to bring with him from CBS. Enthused
about the move, she remarked, That company has
been a disaster for two years but at least by the
time we arrive they will have a hit on their hands.
Intrigued, hed gone out and bought Space
Oddity. Sue told me it was a sensational record,
and she was right, he says.
On his first day in Mercurys Stannard Place
office, Wyper was surprised to notice that the
sales, promotion and marketing staff were sitting
around with no new releases to work on, So I
asked, Well, what happened to that Bowie
record? Oh, we tried, but it didnt go
anywhere. With nothing else to promote, Wyper
set the entire staff on to Space Oddity. This
never happened before or since, says Wyper, it
was purely because we had this three-week
window with no major releases.
In the last week of September, Space Oddity
jumped up the charts to number twenty-five, rising
steadily to peak at number five in a fourteen-week

chart run.
When Davids album was released on 4
November, he was up in Scotland for a short series
of shows backed by Juniors Eyes. By now the
band were at their peak; a 20 October BBC
session, with its superb version of Let Me Sleep
Beside You, easily surpasses their work on
Davids album, and offers a tantalising glimpse of
how that earlier material could have sounded, had
it been worked up live first. But they were odd
gigs, says guitarist Tim Renwick, A couple were
quite rough on one there was a cage up front in
case the audience got out of control.
David was nervous, slightly out of place amid
the hard-bitten, hardworking band. Most of them
were heavy dope smokers, especially Mick Wayne
and his wife Charlotte, who were, eyes on the
wall, very stoned, always. There were lighter
moments Juniors Eyes singer Graham Kelly
remembers Bowie throwing down a gauntlet to him
after a few drinks in a vegetarian restaurant, after
which they raced through the frozen Edinburgh
Streets, Bowie on the bonnet of his car, Kelly on

the bonnet of the bands Transit.

After the success of the single, Davids second
album shuffled out in a rather half-hearted manner.
By now, Calvin Lees relationship with Mercury
was troubled, much to Ken Pitts glee, and Olav
Wyper, whod championed Space Oddity, was
completely underwhelmed by the album. I think
David had too much control of the album, and
didnt defer enough to Visconti, he suggests.
Visconti, meanwhile, is not particularly proud of
the work, I dont think David had settled on who
he was as yet. David, tellingly, says of this
period, I was looking for myself, which provides
some explanation for his behaviour. One friend
describes it as weak, almost, mentioning his
reliance on people like Angie and, before her,
Mary Finnigan, to deal with his disagreements with
Ken Pitt or others.
Today, David Bowie is unique in its creators
catalogue thanks to its endearing lack of artifice.
Yet even at the time it was obvious it lacked the
acuity and intensity of folk rockers like Tim Hardin
or Simon and Garfunkel. While the Observers

Tony Palmer famously rhapsodised over Davids

quite devastatingly beautiful looks, the reviews
mostly commented on the thoughtful lyrics and
suggested that Bowie was a follower, rather than a
pioneer. Even Bowies own pronouncements to
writers like Music Nows Kate Simpson betrayed
his awareness that he lacked a convincing,
coherent worldview, shown by his praise for
celebrated right-wing politician Enoch Powell for
at least standing up for a cause whether its
good or bad is not the point.
More worryingly, Simpsons feature mentions
her friends perception that David was a one-hit
wonder, a dread phrase that would crop up with
monotonous regularity over the next few years.
Obviously intelligent, he nonetheless lacked the
talent of, say, John Lennon for encapsulating an
agenda in a song, or a sentence. Six years after
hed formed The King Bees, David had scored his
first hit single, yet the underwhelming impact of his
album seemed to rob him of all momentum. To
many, he simply seemed all over the place.
Yet, for a few key people, Davids live shows

notably his showcase at the South Banks Purcell

Room on 20 November still demonstrated not
lack of focus, but bravery. BBC producer Jeff
Griffin was about to stake his reputation on an
innovative series of In Concert broadcasts the
following spring, opening with Led Zeppelin.
When he saw Bowie at the Purcell Room, Griffin
was blown away. Id read about him working
with Lindsay Kemp, but it wasnt until I saw him
there that I realised there was far more to him than
the average rock star he was doing brave things,
singing Jacques Brel songs. He was one of those
rare performers who just had that extra dimension
to him, something thats hard to describe.
Fascinated by the fact that Bowie had moved on
so dextrously from his twee, but fun Deram
debut, Griffin pencilled in a Bowie show for the
spring. By which time, David would have moved
on again.

7
All the Madmen
It was all a bit of a mess. But in the
centre of all this chaos, mayhem and
noise, David was extremely relaxed.
Mark Pritchett

It was their Graceland: the ostentatious, rambling

and slightly decaying headquarters where David
and Angela Bowie enjoyed marital bliss, interior
decoration and sexual frolics. Innocent teenage
American girls would one day walk in and fondly
imagine themselves as imprisoned in some reimagined Victorian melodrama; cynical journalists
would enter its imposing hallway and be overawed
by the Bowie mystique. It was a location where the
realignment of the musical and fashion values of an

entire decade would be hatched.

Angie had spotted Haddon Hall, at 240
Southend Road in Beckenham, back in the summer
of 1969. Beckenham, a relatively green and leafy
suburb celebrated mainly as the home of Noddy
author Enid Blyton, was just down the road from
Bromley. Angie and David agreed to move into
Flat 7 early in September and established
themselves there at the end of the month. The
building was the epitome of crumbling
magnificence, an opulent High-Victorian family
house, which even at the time struck resident John
Cambridge as reminiscent of Elviss grandiose
Memphis home.
The building, which boasted a magnificent
entrance hall, was divided into flats; David and
Angies flat was on the ground floor, but they also
had the use of the staircase, which led the visitors
up to a small half-landing, dominated by a
magnificent Gothic stained-glass window; from
there the staircase divided, ascending to a gallery
at first-floor level which gave on to a set of
sealed-up doorways, later commandeered as

sleeping space. Tony Visconti and girlfriend Liz

moved into Haddon Hall in December, taking the
back bedroom on the ground floor, and sharing a
huge living room, complete with lavish open
fireplace, with David and Angie; soon Tony had
persuaded Mr Hoys, the owner of the house, to let
him build a rehearsal space in the basement.
Royalties from the Space Oddity single
which by January had sold 138,656 copies in the
UK trickled in slowly, but the singles success
pushed up the fee for Davids live bookings up to a
magnificent 100 or more. Flush for the first time
in his life, David took to spending money like a
duck to water. After passing his driving test and
returning his fathers Fiat to Peggy, he bought a
Rover 100, complete with luxurious leather seats
and walnut dashboard, while he and Angie became
familiar figures at the antique shops on Old Kent
and Tower Bridge Roads, acquiring Art Deco
lamps, William Morris screens and mahogany
chests of drawers.
The establishment of their own palace at
Haddon Hall marked the crowning of Angie as

queen to Bowies king. It was an impressively fast

rise to power, but even for her most recent
acquaintances, it was no surprise. Born in Cyprus
in 1950 to an American mining engineer father and
a mother of Polish extraction, educated at a British
boarding school in Montreux, Switzerland, Mary
Angela Barnett was self-sufficient, energetic and
irresistibly loud. She revelled in telling listeners
of her scandalous expulsion from Connecticut
College for Women for a lesbian affair, and to
most Brits in the era before affordable
transatlantic travel she seemed ravishingly
cosmopolitan. Brought up in sophisticated,
international surroundings, she was as at home
scrubbing Haddon Halls wooden floorboards to
erase the smell of cat pee as she was at
distinguishing a genuine Art Nouveau light fitting
from a reproduction.
From spring 1970 onwards, as John Cambridge
puts it, You met Angie before you met David.
Their union would always be as public as it was
personal, like the celebrity liaisons brokered by
Hollywood PRs anxious to maximise their column

inches. Cambridge was one of those people who

found Angie irritating too domineering and
shouting and saw at first hand how Angie would
force David into decisions he wanted to evade,
notably firing Ken Pitt.
The first public statement of their love affair
was The Prettiest Star, the only new song David
wrote over the winter of 1969. (Absence made his
heart grow fonder, for Angie disappeared to see
her parents in November, partly to flee from
Peggys phone calls accusing her of living in
sin.) Languid and uncharacteristically simple, it
would be almost unique in Bowies canon: a
conventional love song, its lyrics speculating on
their future fame as a professional couple, you and
I will rise up all the way.
As an anthem to Angie, it was appropriate that
The Prettiest Star also marked the passing of Ken
Pitts influence. Ken Pitt dropped in to Trident for
the session an event that was becoming
comparatively rare. It was around 1 a.m. on the
morning on 8 January Davids twenty-third
birthday and as Pitt wandered around the control

room he exchanged only a few words with Bowie

and Tony Visconti, who were chatting to Godfrey
McLean and Delisle Harper, drummer and bassist
from Gass, a funky Santana-ish band that Visconti
recruited for the recording. Photographer David
Bebbington watched Pitt tell no one in particular
that hed just dropped in to see another of his
clients, Billy Eckstine, at the Talk of The Town
club. Bebbington started to feel embarrassed at
how Ken was being cold-shouldered. Pitt proudly
mentioned how hed been working with Eckstine
for twenty years, and Bebbington briefly admired
Pitts loyalty before wondering what Eckstine
once a cutting-edge bandleader, now a mannered
MOR crooner had in common with Bowie. When
Pitt left the studio a few minutes later, no one else
seemed to register hed gone.
A second visitor was, initially at least, more
welcome. It was at Tony Viscontis suggestion that
Marc Bolan dropped in to play lead guitar on The
Prettiest Star; and while mutual friends at the time
remember Marc being brotherly to David, on this,
their only official joint recording, their rivalry

soured the atmosphere. He came in and it was

daggers, remembers Visconti. Everyones having
a good time, then Marc comes in and the
atmosphere chilled up.
Visconti had spent a good few days vibing up
Marc, who was enthusiastic about showing off his
newly acquired electric guitar skills and had
carefully prepared his guitar melody. David, too,
was upbeat, complimenting Marc effusively, when
June Bolan suddenly broke into a tantrum, bitching,
The only good thing about this record is Marcs
guitar. Marc hurriedly packed up his Fender Strat,
and the pair left without another word.
The squabble highlighted the tension that would
always exist in the relationship between David
Bowie and Marc Bolan. Marc had always enjoyed
talking up David, but having predicted Space
Oddity would be a hit, Marc seemed irritated to
be proven right. This was a clear illustration of
how the teenage arrogance that Les Conn
remembers derived from different causes. David
was generally happy when his friends did well;
Marc wasnt. What was confidence in Bowie

equated to bravado in Bolan a distinction for

which June Bolan had an explanation, which she
shared with Ray Stevenson. She had this theory, it
was because Marc had a small dick and David had
a monster. A lot of their personalities come from
this: David can charm the girl and know that
through to the conclusion of this encounter hes not
going to disappoint. Marc couldnt.
David made a good show of seeming
unconcerned by Marcs petulance he was
cheerful on the drive back to Beckenham in his
Rover in the small hours of the morning, buying a
huge Chinese takeaway on the way and spreading it
over the dashboard. But though he might appear
calm in the face of such troubles, his music often
suffered from the confused mess of personalities
surrounding him during this period; he relied, more
than most, on others. That nights show at the
Speakeasy typified the confusion. Tim Renwick
now Davids preferred guitarist ahead of Mick
Wayne was booked at the last minute, but found
Davids passivity and lack of direction irritating.
It wasnt like, Right, here we go. It was more

like Whats next? and then nothing. John

Cambridge wasnt even told there was a show;
hed turned up for a drink at the Speak, along
with Juniors Eyes Roger the roadie, only to be
asked at the last moment, Do you have your
drums? Fortunately, he kept them in the boot of his
Mini Minor. The last-minute request marked his
debut as Bowies official drummer.
Soon after the Speakeasy show, Cambridge also
moved into Haddon Hall, and came to enjoy the
eccentric domesticity. In later years, Haddon Hall
would become celebrated for its sexual excesses.
Yet the atmosphere was more Bloomsbury Set than
Haight Ashbury: Angie made an excellent hostess,
greeting visitors effusively, proffering tea or
biscuits. At other times there were schoolboy japes
David and John Cambridge chasing each other
round with water-pistols or exchanging deadpan
Yorkshire banter. Cambridges humour was
celebrated, sometimes witty and so dry it would
take the listener several seconds to register.
(Maybe I overdid it, he reflects today, Angie

didnt always appreciate all me jokes.)

The deliciously fin de sicle ambience at
Haddon Hall became even more obvious when
Angie found a housekeeper, in the Edwardian
shape of Donna Pritchett, who lived across the
road and whose son, Mark, a pupil at Dulwich
College, had been drawn into the Arts Lab set.
Donna ruled the kitchen, cooking up a Sunday roast
in an emergency, or dispensing endless cups of tea.
She would generally brook no nonsense, chiding
David if he burnt the furniture with a cigarette;
David and Angie were adept at charming her,
sending her greetings cards or little notes written
on the back of a ten-shilling note David was
cute like that, observes Mark.
In fact, David proved remarkably chipper over
the period, far more resilient to the poor sales of
the Philips album than he had been to the fate of his
Deram debut the influx of money from the Space
Oddity single helped, of course. But there was a
more traumatic source of disquiet in his personal
life, one that he voiced publicly in the final days of
the Arts Lab. There was a constant flow of new

volunteers through the organisation, and during one

of their getting to know you meetings, David
introduced himself to those sitting around him with
the words, My name is David. And I have a
brother in Cane Hill.
Most of those present were unaware David had
a brother, but nearly everyone was aware of Cane
Hill. Built in 1882, the asylum was a huge,
purpose-built Gothic complex intended to provide
a more sympathetic, modern environment for the
incurably insane, with extensive grounds and
outdoor pavilions from which the inmates could
enjoy views of London. Nevertheless, the building,
on a commanding hill in Coulsdon, ten miles southeast of Beckenham, was regarded as a terrifying
place, famous locally as the insane asylum which
had housed Charlie Chaplins mother, who had
been confined to a padded cell and hosed down
with freezing water, as a primitive antecedent of
electro-shock therapy. The establishment was more
enlightened in the 1960s, but there was a
justifiable fear for inmates and their relatives that
once theyd walked through its imposing gates,

they would never return. As Hannah Chaplin told

her son when he visited her, Dont lose your way
they might keep you here.
After his National Service in the Royal Air
Force and move into Plaistow Grove, Terry had
enjoyed a brief period of apparent domestic
harmony,
which was
nonetheless
often
overshadowed by the effects of his illness. It was
during this period that David had taken Terry to
see Cream in Bromley, and witnessed the effects of
what was later diagnosed as schizophrenia. For a
time after this, while he stayed with mother and
step-father, Terrys condition was stable, but in the
wake of Haywoods death, he deteriorated. Peggy
who was in the process of moving to a flat on
Albermarle Road in Beckenham was unable to
cope with her son, precipitating his move to Cane
Hill. Peggy, according to friends, found the
prospect of visiting Terry at the hospital too
traumatic to endure instead, her sister Pat would
attend with her husband, Tony Antoniou.
Around 1969 and 1970 the first time David
had a home of his own David was also able to

provide shelter for his half-brother, and at various

times Terry would be seen around Haddon Hall,
on release from Cane Hill. He met many of
Davids closest friends during this period, and was
friendly, sometimes chatty especially about
football and sometimes confused. But in the long
term, David proved as unable to cope with Terrys
illness as his mother.
Those who saw David and Terry together were
never in doubt that, as Mark Pritchett remembers,
Terry adored his brother and he was a lovely
chap. David obviously loved and respected Terry,
citing him again and again as the source of many of
his key musical and literary interests. But the
principal emotion that Terry inspired in his halfbrother was, says Pritchett, guilt.
In the opinion of Davids aunt Pat, who publicly
chastised David for his lack of attention to Terry in
the 1980s, that guilt was justified: in her view,
David simply turned his back on his half-brother.
In fairness, there was probably little he could have
done. Ray Stevenson, who spent a lot of time
around Haddon Hall as Terrys mental health

deteriorated, points out, Ive known some

schizophrenics and there is not much you can do to
help they are how they are and its horrible. You
have to just not think about it. So Id never slag
him off for it.
Bowies fear of the madness in his family would
become a common theme its the stuff of
classical drama, and has been a prism through
which many have chosen to analyse his career,
despite the lack of evidence to support it.
Throughout this period, David was notably calm,
controlled: he couldnt have seemed more sane.
Yet, as anyone who has been emotionally close to
someone suffering from schizophrenia or paranoia
will know, madness is contagious; the
descriptions of a schizophrenics visions can be
more affecting, seem more convincing, than
genuine, banal experiences. When he wrote songs,
Davids empathised with his half-brother; in
everyday life, David felt helpless. Terrys plight
was always an issue that David dealt with in song,
rather than in reality, with the result that, says
Mark Pritchett, David built up a lot of guilt about

him. And I think the darker songs are actually

tributes to him.
With The Prettiest Star as yet unreleased, few
performances to occupy him, grief for his dad,
troubles with Ken, and the traumas of Terry and
Peggy, it was hardly surprising that Bowie spent
much of January 1970 cocooned at Haddon Hall.
To make matters worse, his band, Juniors Eyes,
was falling apart. Mick Waynes increasing
ingestion of drugs caused most of those around him
to agree with singer Graham Kelly, who says, I
loved the guy but working with him was a
nightmare. By the end of January, every member
of the band knew they would split; the only
question, as singer Kelly remembers, was Which
way would people jump and who would go with
Bowie? With the BBC In Concert session
scheduled for 5 February, David needed to move
quickly.
Tim Renwick was the obvious front-runner for
guitarist. But John Cambridge, the first official
recruit to Davids outfit, had another prospect in

mind, a ferociously talented guitarist whod played

in his previous band, The Rats: Id been pestering
[David and Tony] to death, so finally I go down to
Hull to find Mick Ronson. I knew where he
worked, I arrive and hes creosoting this training
ground, Im telling him Ive got in with this band in
London, David Bowie, its really good, and it
needs a guitarist. And hes going Oh I dont
know, I got in with a band in Sweden and was
ripped off and Im not about to do that again. So
Im thinking, I just pestered them two to let me
come down here and now Ive got to pester him
to go up there!
Cambridges persuasion worked. Ronson turned
up for the bands show at the Marquee on 3
February; after the show the guitarist commented
enthusiastically on the performance, as was his
way. Even if it was shite, Mick would still say it
was good, Cambridge explains. The drummer
introduced Bowie to Ronson at the venue, but
David was distracted; only when they all returned
to Haddon Hall and Ronson picked up an acoustic
and started to play did Bowie register him. At that

moment, as Tony Visconti describes it, Everything

was starting to click into place.
Mick Ronsons career had interlaced with
Bowies over the past five or six years, through
fellow Yorkshiremen like John Hutchinson, who
had shared the bill with The Rats at venues across
the north-east. Born and raised in Hull once a
prosperous and confident Victorian city but, by the
late sixties, already gripped by a long-term
industrial decline Mick Ronson was a unique
musician, cut-throat in terms of his musical
ambition, but remarkably laid-back when it came
to advancing his own career.
Local musician Keith Herd witnessed one of
Ronsons first tentative shows with his band The
Crestas, and bumped into the guitarist regularly in
the local music shop, Cornells. In 1967, after
Herd set up a tiny recording studio in his front
room, Mick turned up with his new band, The Rats,
and I couldnt believe how hed come on.
Playing a Fender Telecaster, Ronson had mastered
heavy guitar using the amplifier and volume to

get incredible sustain. It was the first time Id ever

heard it done.
The four-minute long mini-opera that The Rats
constructed, The Rise and Fall of Bernie
Gripplestone, was Who-influenced, distinguished
exclusively by Ronsons howling guitar. Although
there are shades of Hendrix, Townshend and
Micks principal guitar idol, Jeff Beck, Ronsons
playing was already unique; concise, tough rhythm
guitar one moment, wildly fluid lead the next, made
all the more thrilling by Ronsons talent for
bending a note to scary extremes a unique trick
that, according to bandmate Trevor Bolder, hed
mastered thanks to a fingernail on his left hand that
was so tough and hard it was almost deformed.
Nocking the string into a groove on the nail, he
could bend it almost clear across the neck of the
guitar. By the end of 1968, when he picked up a
Les Paul Custom from Cornells and plugged it
into his Marshall stack, he had become Hulls
unchallenged guitar hero.
Good-looking, with his flint-sharp face and
boney nose, Mick was friendly, a typical muso: his

conversation revolved around music and women; if

he ever saw someone ogling his guitar hed nod
and encourage them, telling them, Go on, have a
go. Then hed shake the new acquaintances hand,
enthusiastically. He was open-minded musically,
as keen on harmony pop like The Move as heavy
rock. And like the rest of The Rats, says bassist
Keith Ched Cheeseman, he was a piss-taker.
Often, the piss-taking was directed at suggestions
that The Rats change their winning formula. And
by the end of 1969, Cheeseman noticed that
although Mick had been indisputably the best
musician in Hull when the bassist had first joined
the band, one year later younger rivals were
gaining on him.
Mick Ronson, with The Rats, had enjoyed
staying in his comfort zone. With Bowie and Tony
Visconti, though, he was wrenched right out of it.
The process started that Saturday, which he spent
huddled with the pair, hurriedly learning songs for
Jeff Griffins In Concert on Sunday 5 February. It
was a huge coup for Bowie to headline the new
series Marc Bolan, in contrast, was a last-minute

substitution for half of a show and Davids use of

a guitarist hed met two days before was a massive
risk; an early example of the inspired gambles that
would come to characterise his career.
The In Concert show represented another
Bowie first: his use of the BBC to prototype the
next phase of his work. From its opening moments
in front of a small audience at Regent Streets
Paris Cinema, with a gritty, solo version of Brels
Port of Amsterdam, there is a new toughness and
sense of adrenalin. Familiar songs like Unwashed
and Somewhat Slightly Dazed sound Dylan-esque
and faintly worthy until Ronson hooks his mutant
fingernail under the guitar string and, for the first
time in Bowies career, the listener is in real doubt
as to where the song is heading (a feeling shared
by Ronson, who gets a couple of chords wrong).
Nonetheless, its his drawn-out, exhausting guitar
work that inspires announcer John Peel to
pronounce the song a bit of a treat.
The Width of a Circle, heard here for the first
time, shares the sense of danger; Ronsons guitar
lines seamlessly interlacing with Bowies bashed-

out acoustic chords, while Viscontis bass guitar is

relentlessly fluid and inventive. There are few
recordings where we get to hear a band gel, in
public, for the very first time; this is one of them.
Ronsons influences are apparent the modal
melodies evoking Hendrix, the twin-note Memphis
scale taken from country licks but are
instinctively incorporated into a coherent style. In
the process, David Bowies style becomes
coherent, too.
After the concert there was muttering about
missed endings, wrong chords, the fact that it was
a bit crap really, says Cambridge. But the fact the
performance was raw as fuck was part of the
excitement, You could see even then that was a lot
better. Mick lifted it. It was incredibly exciting,
remembers Tony Visconti, because we knew
Mick was going to work out he had something
we needed.
Rickety and sporadic as it was, Bowies short
tour from the end of February, 1970, would be his
first with a proper, consistent band since the
Lower Third days. Ronson had no second thoughts

about joining up, but there were fleeting

suggestions of augmenting the line-up with Tim
Renwick, who turned up at Haddon Hall to be
checked out by David and Angie. My girlfriend
came with me and Angie was checking her out I
remember thinking, Blimey, this is odd. Angie
perhaps didnt approve, but in any case Renwick
needed paying and Ronson was happy to play for
free. For days, he and David immersed themselves
in practice at Haddon Hall, sitting opposite each
other. John Cambridge would drop in to see how it
was going. It would be just the two of them in the
bedroom with the guitar. Id go in and theyd say,
Hang on John were just doing this. In other
words piss off.
Ronsons arrival galvanised the Haddon Hall
crew, and the languor that had overcome David
since his fathers death seemed to evaporate in the
run-up to the bands debut at the Roundhouse on 22
February.
While Bowie and Ronson practised, Angie went
shopping for their clothes, assisted by Mark
Pritchett. Tony was working out of Oxford Street

and we all met there in the morning but lunchtime

and the whole afternoon was spent, Angie and I,
scurrying around theatrical costumiers to dress
them all up.
It was in this brief afternoon, spent scurrying
around Charing Cross Road and Fitzrovia, that the
foundation of David Bowies image throughout the
1970s would be laid. In the mid-sixties, hed
become a pretty convincing Mod; since that time,
his attire had reverted to a vaguely post-hippie
style, his hair curled in what Ken Pitt thought was
tribute to Bob Dylan; with his flowery shirts and
afghan coats, David could have passed for Eric
Clapton in his Cream heyday of 1969 or so. In his
previous incarnations, David was pretty, tasteful,
or cool. It was Angie and, later, Chelita Secunda
who would push him to be outrageous.
With Pritchett in tow, Angie masterminded the
bands flamboyant attire during that afternoons
shopping: a gangster outfit, with fedora, for
Ronson, who was given the title Gangsterman; a
leotard with an H sewn on the chest for Visconti,
the Hypeman; a cowboy outfit for John Cambridge;

and a multicoloured, diaphanous concoction, with

scarves attached to a lurex shirt, for David
Rainbowman.
Ken Pitt claimed credit for naming the band,
remembering that after Bowie had told him, This
is one big hype, he said, Well, why not call it
The Hype? But it seems David may have got the
idea from photographer Ray Stevenson, who
suggested the name only for David to respond, We
cant use it Led Zeppelins publishers are called
SuperHype. According to Jeff Dexter, who
introduced the show, the name only started being
bandied around after the fact. Theyd just said the
name casually it was only after certain people
caught on that it crept into the vocabulary.
There was no doubt that the Roundhouse show
was a major event; the In Concert performance
alerted fans that Bowie was unveiling a new work
in progress, and many friends from the Three Tuns
turned up for the bands support slot to Noel
Reddings short-lived band, Fat Mattress. Mark
Pritchett was one of them, and actually remembers
the performance being a bit of a mess. Ronson

was using a 200 watt Marshall amplifier stack that

totally overpowered the other musicians. People
expected quite a lot, says Pritchett, and what they
got was much of Man Who Sold The World at
thunderous volume. A lot of that material suited
thunderous volume and a lot of it didnt. So it
sounded a bit of a mess. Yet there was one thing
Pritchett did notice: At the centre of all this
mayhem, chaos and noise David was extremely
relaxed.
The show later would be seen as a crucial
staging post on the way to glam, not least because
Marc Bolan turned up and, says Visconti, watched
the show in rapt attention, his chin on the stage.
The bands theatrical outfits drew ridicule,
according to Visconti, but David, who had seen
how Lindsay Kemp could carry off the most
outrageous outfits, was buoyed up by the reaction.
Just as crucially, as Mark Pritchett observed,
David was moving. His body language had
entirely changed: the costumes, the artifice and the
raw power of Ronsons guitar had unlocked the
carefree joy of Davids early R&B days.

David seemed well aware hed turned a corner.

You could tell he knew a band was good for him,
says Pritchett. During the sporadic run of dates that
continued through February and March he was
relaxed, enjoying his trip to Hull for a show at the
university on 6 March, hanging out in the refectory
with a tiny group of fans and bemused students.
Angies presence seemed to register with them as
much as the bands. David and Angie had
identical curly hair, similar skinny build, you know
how people who look a little similar to each other
can fall in love? remembered one student, who
shared a table with them.
For David, the failure of the single celebrating
his and Angies infatuation was the only
disappointment of an otherwise idyllic spring.
Released the day they sat chatting in the refectory,
The Prettiest Star slipped into oblivion with less
than 1000 copies sold. For Ken Pitt, the release of
the single confirmed his opinion of Angie as a
predator, and his fears that influence was
irretrievably slipping away from him were
confirmed in March, as the two planned their

marriage.
In later years, as she came to terms with their
celebrated and rancorous split, Angie would
publicly doubt that David had ever loved her;
indeed, some of her accounts of their decision to
marry quote him as asking, Can you handle the
fact that I dont love you? On another occasion
Angie has described how the pair realised they
were in love during their separation over
Christmas 1969, which Angie spent with her
parents in Cyprus, eagerly awaiting letters. After a
ten-day postal strike, she received a card on which
were written the words, We will marry, I
promise, this year.
Today, Angie retains much of the ebullience and
enthusiasm that made her so magnetic back in
1970, but the emotional damage shes sustained
since that time causes her to ascribe darker,
exploitative motives to most of her ex-husbands
behaviour. At one point, she tells me, I dont
know anything that Davids done that wasnt for
his own benefit. Again and again we return to the

topic, only to find her unable to contemplate any

other interpretation.
Most of Davids own pronouncements over the
years support this bleak picture. When David
talked about their marriage at the time, he did so as
if it were a brand. After their catastrophically
nasty split, he could hardly bear to mention Angie
at all. Yet those who were emotionally close to
Angie and David in their early days ascribe purer
motives to their relationship. Ava Cherry, who
would later become Davids official girlfriend
even as he stayed married to Angie an official
position akin to that of the Kings mistress in the
French Court concedes, I do think he had love
for her, before pointing out, Im giving her props
she would never me. Ava adds, She was
nurturing, and he needed that, but more
importantly, he liked the way she thought.
Scott Richardson would later occupy a
corresponding position to Ava Cherrys, as
Angies official lover and Davids music buddy,
and he too states, It was genuine, a real thing.
They tried to have a new kind of marriage, an open

marriage, and it was absolutely brilliant what that

represented.
Angie and Davids relationship had been an
open one from the day they met. Angie, she says,
signalled that the same would apply after their
marriage, when she arranged for them to spend the
night before their 20 March wedding in bed with a
stunning dark-haired actress theyd met via Calvin
Lee. Ken Pitt had heard about the wedding from
Peggy, who disapproved of Angie, but nonetheless
decided to turn up uninvited. It was a tiny
gathering; John Cambridge was one of just three
men, along with Roger the Roadie. Mick Ronson
was absent and Visconti was working. David had
asked Cambridge to act as witness; but when the
registrar called out, Peggy, seated a couple of
rows from the front, got up to sign the register.
David looked around at John, and shrugged his
shoulders. The wedding reception was a drink in a
nearby pub.
The unique nature of the Bowies marriage was
brought home to John Cambridge a couple of days
later, when he went to the Speakeasy with David

and Angie. They were close friends by now, and

John had often heard David frolicking with other
women at Haddon Hall, but was shocked to see
David dancing with a bloke. But they only just
got married! John remembers thinking. Seeing him
watching, Angie grabbed Johns hand and tried to
pull him onto the dance floor. I turned around, that
waant the way I was brought up. Im only
nineteen, still really naive. Only years later did he
wonder whether shocking his young drummer, and
enjoying his reaction, was part of the appeal for
David. And the intriguing possibility remains that
Davids enjoyment of the nineteen-year-olds
embarrassment inspired 1972s John, Im Only
Dancing.
The chutzpah of Davids new wife would have a
transformative effect on Davids career in several
crucial aspects: one of her first acts was to
persuade Philips Olav Wyper to advance 4000
to The Hype to fund living expenses, PA system
and new tyres for the van, which had arrived at
Haddon Hall along with Rats roadie Roger, also
known as Roger the Lodger.

With The Hype now on their way to a semi-official

status, it was time to make their studio debut, in
this case with a wonderful reworking of Memory
of a Free Festival, recorded on 3 April and to be
issued as the US follow-up to Space Oddity. To
hear each instrument warming up, and then to hear
Ronsons guitar take the song by the scruff of its
neck and thrust it forward is even now a thrilling
experience, in which the listener can hear Bowies
career snapping into shape.
The session would also mark an ending, too.
There had been a last-minute postponement of the
session due to a double-booking with a live show
in Scarborough, arranged by Ken Pitt. Ken had sent
a note to Haddon Hall confirming the live date, but
the confusion crystallised Davids dissatisfaction
with the man whod overseen his career for the last
three and a half years.
Some time in March, David called Olav
Wypers office to ask if they could meet. He was
clearly very depressed at times very tearful,
says the Philips boss. He said hes reached this
impasse with Ken, and their relationship was

getting in the way of where his career should be

going. And he asked, What do I think, and how can
I help him? In later years, Wyper wondered
whether Davids tearfulness was calculated; if so,
it had the desired effect, making him side with the
vulnerable singer. As general manager of Davids
record company, he had a duty to avoid a conflict
of interest, but after asking David if he had a copy
of his contract with Ken which he hadnt he
gave him the names of three firms who could
advise him. The first entry on the list was a pair of
people whom Wyper knew well, who had decided
to go into business together just a few weeks
before. Their names were Laurence Myers and
Tony Defries.
In the spring of 1970, Laurence Myers was well
known around the London music industry,
principally as a management and accounting expert
whose clients included Mickie Most. Myers was
meticulous, well connected through his role as a
show-business accountant, and was in the process
of establishing his own management company, to
be known as Gem or GTO.

Tony Defries had come to Myers and Wypers

attention as a lawyer with the legal firm of Martin
Beston. Wyper had many friends who happened to
be photographers, including Terence Donovan,
who had called in Martin Beston to help with
copyright issues; Tony Defries was the lawyer
assigned to their case. Wyper attended the meeting
where Defries pitched for their business. Tony
was very bullish he had a very firm attitude, and
a belief that right was with him. I was very
impressed.
Only later did Wyper happen to meet another
solicitor from Martin Beston and discover that the
go-getting lawyer he had seen in action was not
exactly what he seemed. Tony was very clever.
He described himself as a lawyer [and I] assumed
he was a solicitor. And then I found out later that
Tony was a solicitors clerk. He was a lawyer,
which is defined as someone working in the field
of law, but not what I assumed. Winning over an
audience on first impression, and leaving details
until later, was part of Tony Defries style.
Defries and Myers position on the list provided

by Olav Wyper meant that, fatefully, they were the

first to be called. There were several meetings
throughout March, and Myers remembers being
impressed by David Bowie. I liked him and I
knew David was a special artist. But over their
first discussions, it turned out to be Myers
business affairs manager, Defries, who realised the
potential of the young singer hoping to discard his
manager. As Myers admits, it was Tony Defries
who had the vision. His great ability was, far
more than I did, he knew what a star David was
going to be.
The exact degree to which Defries was
convinced by Davids potential on their first
meeting, in which David poured out his troubles, is
hard to gauge. But Davids dilemma appealed to
Defries problem-solving abilities. He assured
David that he could extricate him from his contract
with Pitt. Pitt, in the meantime, had no concrete
evidence of Davids dissatisfaction, until a
meeting at his office on 31 March, when David
finally told him, Ken, Id like to have a go at
managing myself. The news came as no surprise,

says Pitt Id heard of at least one other

management team whod offered David something
but after promising to cut down on the live dates,
and giving David a cheque for 200, it seemed the
matter was settled, at least as far as Pitt was
concerned. He continued to oversee arrangements,
like the fast-approaching sessions for the next
Mercury album.
The decision to rid himself of Pitt steeled
Davids resolve in other respects. During a BBC
radio session produced by Bernie Andrews on 25
March, a dry-run for the album sessions, John
Cambridge found a skipping bass drum part too
tricky. David and Ronson were both calm and
patient. Course you can do it, come on, Ronson
kept repeating, and Cambridge managed to finish
the session. But within the next fortnight, John was
gone. His replacement was Mick Woody
Woodmansey who had taken Johns place in The
Rats when Cambridge left after being asked to
rehearse on Easter Bank Holiday. A more
expansive drummer, and a more serious, forceful
personality, Woodmanseys complex rhythm

patterns and extravagant rolls suited the bands

move to a freer, more improvisational sound.
Visconti, though, admired Cambridges solid, nofrills drumming, and was surprised to see it was
Mick Ronson, rather than David, who had
instigated the sacking.
When it came to music, it seemed Ronson was
every bit as unsentimental as Bowie. And as the
album recording began, on 18 April at Trident, it
was the guitarist who commanded the sessions,
moving into the realm of recording with the same
intensity with which hed mastered the guitar.
Visconti, whose studio experience far outstripped
Ronsons, fondly remembers that It was Mick who
was our guru anything he told us to do, wed do.
It was Ronson who worked on arrangements,
persuading Visconti to switch to a Gibson shortscale bass for a more fluid guitar-like sound, wrote
out synthesiser lines for Ralph Mace, or even
duetted on recorder with Visconti. Mick was
omnipresent, dominating the texture and the mood
of the album christened The Man Who Sold the
World in stark contrast to Bowie, who was at

times, says Visconti, just plain difficult to nail

down.
David had been remarkably unassertive during
his first Mercury album; this time around, he
seemed more confident, but still often surprisingly
casual, leaving huge amounts of work to Ronson
and Visconti, who points out, As a novice
producer I just couldnt understand why David
wouldnt want to be in the studio every minute
with us. In recent years, David has occasionally
seemed needled by Viscontis comments, pointing
out his own, dominant role in the writing: Who
else writes chord sequences like that? But Ken
Scott, engineer on the session, also remembers
Ronson and Visconti dominating every aspect of a
record from which Bowie was largely absent.
Tony and Mick did take over. How much it was
David not wanting to have anything to do with it,
and how much was Tony taking over I dont know.
But I think it was more Tonys ideas [on the
album] than Davids.
Viscontis frustration with Bowie derived more
from them and us divisions than any musical

disagreements. Davids infatuation with Angie was

understandable, but more galling was the fact that
David was the only one out of all of us who had
money in the bank, from Space Oddity, while we
were living on nothing. These strange, sometimes
pleasant but often dysfunctional circumstances
were the backdrop for what would be Bowies
first great, albeit flawed, album. In his previous
works, there had been little emotional commitment:
Space Oddity encompassed simple alienation,
and even in a sweet, personal song like Letter to
Hermione hed sounded disappointed rather than
distraught. Yet for this album, he could ride on the
wave of noise created by Ronson and Visconti,
using them as a vehicle to intensify his own
emotions.
The recording of The Man Who Sold the World
encapsulates an issue that would resurface
throughout David Bowies career; how much was
his own work, and how much that of his
subordinates? For detractors using arguments
which parallel those who criticised contemporary
artists like Andy Warhol, who simply mapped out

concepts and left associates like Gerard Malanga

to produce their screenprints or movies this
reliance on his sidemen was a flaw.
Viscontis own feelings on the subject are
complex, but he summarises his own account by
stating, With a smile on my face, I have to say that
Mick and I couldnt have made such a stunning
album with anyone else. The meaning seems
simple: that the album is a Ronson and Visconti
album, with David Bowie, as opposed to a David
Bowie album with Ronson and Visconti. Yet the
ownership of the album is complex, for Bowie
unlocked a creativity in both Ronson and Visconti
that might otherwise have remained dormant. In his
Lower Third days, Davids songwriting consisted
mainly of outright theft. The moral position here
was more nuanced. Without Bowie, Visconti and
Ronsons collaborations, as the band Ronno, were
utterly forgettable. Can one really steal
something that, without you, wouldnt exist?
In Bowies frequent absences Ronson and
Visconti laboured over several songs, notably She
Shook Me Cold, Black Country Rock and the

middle section of The Width of a Circle, all of

which emerged from band jams, with Ronson
leading the way. Bowie took the lead for The Man
Who Sold the World, Saviour Machine, The
Supermen and After All; but even in these songs,
Bowie acquired, almost by osmosis, Ronsons
musical aggression, with the guitarists twisted
lead guitar encouraging him to explore the most
twisted, dark themes hed so far attempted.
All the Madmen was a touchtone of the album:
imposing and disturbing, its theme of madness, and
the musical swerves from child-like whimsy to
imposing, gothic heavy rock, were taken by many
as an illustration of Bowies alien nature. This
interpretation, however, overlooks its unique
genius, for it is in fact a work not of alienation, but
of empathy. The lyrics, delivered with a Syd
Barrett-like childishness, address Terrys move to
Cane Hill a mansion cold and grey in almost
literal terms. Its talk of being high on the far side
of town, rather than alluding to drugs, or to Christ
being tempted by the devil, refers simply to Cane
Hills vantage point over London. There is an

almost unbearable sadness about Davids

declaration that Id rather stay here with all the
madmen, alongside Terry, than remain outside
Cane Hills walls, with all the sad men. That this
was a wish David proclaimed in song, rather than
acting on it in real life, adds to the songs
poignancy.
The intensity of the sessions overpowered
occasional weaknesses. She Shook Me Cold was
a straightforward knock-off of Hendrixs Voodoo
Chile. Yet the conviction with which the song is
delivered, and the unique timbre of Bowies voice
and Ronsons guitar, make the song gel in a way
that Davids previous homages had never
achieved. For the first time, Davids material was
transcending its origins.
The same applied to Davids lyrics. Many of the
references were conventional post-hippie fare,
from Nietzsche endlessly name-checked by Jim
Morrison to Kahlil Gibran, whose books Bolan
had posed with on Unicorn, Tyrannosaurus Rexs
third album. Whether David was a true adept of the
philosophies he name-dropped is doubtful. Mick

Farren was, as much as anyone in 1970, in the

London intellectual vanguard, through his work
with International Times and membership of the
band Pink Fairies. A casual friend of Bowie, he
describes him as, a bit of poser. Everyone was.
Except where some people would read a book
jacket and bullshit, David would bullshit, then read
the book quietly one Sunday afternoon. Today,
David confirms Farrens take, describing his
philosophical investigations of the time as mainly
consisting of keeping a book in my pocket, with
the title showing.
Still, if the scholarship was sketchy, it worked
emotionally. The Man Who Sold the World its
title at least surely influenced by Heinleins
celebrated Man Who Sold the Moon is the most
poignant. Under- rather than over-written, it is all
the more unsettling because of its simplicity.
Ronsons insistent opening riff is claustrophobic
and vaguely menacing, as is the narrators meeting
with a man: although I wasnt there, he said I was
his friend. Over two simple verses, multiple
meanings emerge all of them disturbing, speaking

of death or loss of identity. Ronsons guitar line for

the chorus is childishly simple, as are the lyrics.
But the guitar scales that punctuate the chorus
march endlessly upwards, like a never-ending
staircase representing an eternity spent
wandering. Like All the Madmen, the song is
disturbing, with an emotional intensity that was
new to Bowies work.
The complex, emotional environment that gave
birth to The Man Who Sold the World became
murkier still when on 27 April, halfway through
the sessions, David wrote to Ken, informing him he
now no longer considered him his manager and
asking him in mis-phrased legal jargon to
confirm within seven days that he would cease
acting as such. A week later, he and Tony Defries
were at Pitts Manchester Street office. Defries
was low-key, but did all of the talking; as would
become his style, he confronted the problem headon but left troublesome details until later in this
case, compensating Pitt for the money hed
invested in David.
For Pitt, the meeting was devastating. In

hindsight, the warning signs were obvious, but

Davids defection came as a cruel, unforeseen
blow. All those around him at the time, including
Wyper, remember him being obviously traumatised
but also touchingly anxious to ensure Davids
career wouldnt suffer. Today Pitt details a host of
arrangements he had planned for Bowie which
included a trip to New York on a Cunard liner,
using all of his Warhol connections all of which
might well have filled out the career limbo in
which the singer would still soon find himself.
When considering the suggestion that he was too
gentlemanly for the music industry, a shadow
passes over Pitts face before he responds,
Perhaps I wasnt assertive enough. But my God, I
put my hand in my pocket and spent the money on
David, which they werent doing over that period.
In those early post-Pitt days, Defries played a
fatherly, advisory role: in the main, he simply
talked about solving problems. He was not
particularly proactive at first, but was an
accomplished name-dropper, who seemed to have
a unique sympathy with the artistic temperament.

He described how he would protect the precious

items that they created, their intellectual copyright,
as if it were a religious calling, and explained how
he was at the cutting edge of such a process,
liberating artists from the clutches of incompetent
record companies.
The Man Who Sold the World was completed
on 22 May, but as the tapes were handed over to
Philips, the record company was once again
embroiled in problems that seemed to justify Tony
Defries cynicism about record companies. For
towards the autumn of 1970, he discovered that
Olav Wyper, his champion at the label, was being
ousted. David faced being an orphan artist.
The loss of Wyper was soon followed by the
disappearance of Tony Visconti and Mick Ronson.
Their defection would become a well-known
staging post in David Bowies career. Another
setback is, in comparison, obscure. For by the end
of the year, the new manager who promised to
champion David Bowie had disappeared, too. Just
at the point when hed demonstrated how much he
needed supporters to help realise his vision, David

Bowie would be at his most alone.

8
Kooks
It will either be a disaster, or everything
will be hunky dory.
Peter Shoot

Its the middle of 2007, and Tony Defries is

holding forth. Its an impressive spectacle: the way
his conversation flits from subject to subject
analysing hidden patterns and trends, switching
from science fiction to steel mills, the Second
World War to electronic substrates is
enthralling. His voice has an upper-class languor,
but hes proud of his street-urchin credentials, and
while his talk is grandiose theres an engaging
practicality to all of his high-falutin claims, a
delight in the nuts and bolts of contracts, an innate

understanding of how companies are organised,

and a disdain for those who lack the command of
such essentials.
This is the man whose two role models, Colonel
Tom Parker and Allen Klein, are two of the most
controversial managers in the history of rock
music. Fittingly, Tony Defries is the third. Like
Parker, he was an integral part of his clients rise
to fame. Like Allen Klein, he and his best-known
client suffered the most rancorous and public of
splits.
Defries is a master of the Big Lie: telling the
masses his client was huge, when he was as yet
strictly small-time; manipulating the truth on every
level to advance his client; creating a fake reality
that would have been envied by a Hollywood
press agent of the thirties. But then there is the little
lie: the notion that Tony Defries took a chance on
David Bowie when he was a washed up, one-hit
wonder. For as those who were at the centre of it
all testify, the reality is rather different.
*
Soon after Wypers disappearance from Philips,

Tony Visconti left Haddon Hall. He and his

girlfriend Liz moved out in July for practical,
household reasons Haddon Hall was getting
crowded but it marked a change in Tonys
priorities: from David to Marc Bolan. That same
month, Marc recorded a song named Ride a White
Swan; by its October release he had shortened the
band name to T. Rex famously, so daytime radio
DJs could pronounce it marking his ascension
from the underground to stardom.
By September, Defries ambitions had extended
beyond being a mere legal adviser to David, for it
was at that time that he officially joined forces
with Laurence Myers, using his relationship with
Bowie, and Bowies social acquaintance, Lionel
Bart, as leverage. According to Myers, Defries
was employed initially as business affairs
manager, with a promise that if his signings made
money, Defries would have twenty per cent of
Myers new company, Gem.
With Pitt gone, it was time for Defries to
eliminate another old-school collaborator:
Davids publisher, David Platz. Platz a

concentration-camp survivor and a respected but

not necessarily loved businessman considered
David still under contract to Essex Music, with
more songs to deliver; Defries simply told Platz
the contract was terminated, and started looking for
a new publisher. This was classic Defries
grandstanding, breaking an impasse and sorting out
the details later. The deal caused a long-running
legal dispute, with David forced to hand over
several songs in later years as recompense, but the
legal ramifications were irrelevant. The Chrysalis
signing represented a fresh start. Defries promised
he would deliver a fresh start for Davids
recording contract, too, once his Mercury deal
came up for renewal in June, 1971.
Defries showed plenty of chutzpah with Platz, as
he had with Pitt. But when it came to signing deals,
rather than terminating them, he seemed less pushy.
In those early days it was Laurence Myers, not
Defries, who boasted good connections in the
music industry. One of them was Bob Grace, who
had just joined Chrysalis to set up a publishing
division. In September 1970, Myers called to ask

if hed meet one of his new clients.

Unusually, no one from Davids new
management company turned up for the meeting at
Graces office. Instead, David and Angie arrived
unaccompanied; but if David was nervous, he
didnt betray his concern for a moment. Instead, he
was expansive, ravishing, charming, a natural-born
salesman. Angie, too, exuded glamour. Both of
them, says Grace, really knew to work the
system, telling him about the songs David was
working on, inviting him down to spend time at
Haddon Hall, drawing him into their web. Before
long, says Grace, Bowie was sticking to me like a
limpet.
Grace was already a fan of Space Oddity, and
loved a new song, Holy Holy, that David played
him. Soon he had agreed to pay what was, for
Chrysalis, the unprecedented sum of 5000 for a
five-year publishing contract with David. The deal
was signed on 23 October, 1970.
Tony Visconti was another insider who, like
Bob Grace, was suspicious of Davids new
manager. Part of this was prompted by the split

with Essex, for whom Visconti still worked his

suspicions deepened with what Visconti regarded
as Defries clumsy attempts to recruit him to Gem.
Viscontis dislike of Defries was compounded by
Bolan and Bowies rivalry. Marc knew where he
was heading, was more focused and seemed on the
verge of a commercial breakthrough. David and I
had a parting of the ways, says Visconti. I felt
terrible, but Marc was about to become almost a
full-time job for the next two years of my life.
Viscontis departure left an opening for a
producer and bassist; his immediate replacement
was studio veteran Herbie Flowers, who over-saw
Bowies next single, Holy Holy. The song was
funky, its looseness and vocal sound obviously
Bolan-ish, but as Flowers concedes, Some
records just dont gel. The single disappeared into
oblivion on its release in January, 1971. Even
Davids supporters seemed to lose hope. Maybe
theres something about Bowie that doesnt run
alongside the path of luck, declared Penny
Valentine, the writer who had kept a close eye on
Bowies career thus far.

By the time Holy Holy was released, Mick

Ronson
and
Woody
Woodmansey
had
disappeared, too. The abiding rumour was that
Defries had sent them home, but in fact the pair
werent pushed: they jumped. Mick Ronson was on
his way to a Hype show in Leeds when he saw a
sign on the A1 that pointed to Hull. The lure of his
hometown proved too strong for the guitarist, who
asked Woody, Do we really want to do this? Or
should we go back and do rock music like weve
always wanted? And Woody replied, Yeah! The
pair would reunite with Rats singer Benny
Marshall and record as Ronno, with Visconti,
before recruiting Trevor Bolder on bass for live
shows.
Before the failure of Holy Holy, Defries had
been bullish. But soon Londons newest
management guru seemed to fade into the
background. One reason was that he had to wait
out the expiry of Davids contract. A second
reason was that David was very needy, calling
people up at odd hours, turning up at their doorstep if they didnt answer the phone, convinced that

his own cause was paramount. Defries could be

fatherly, but as his later lieutenant, Tony Zanetta,
points out, He wasnt there to wipe peoples ass
for them.
Yet there was a far more crucial reason for
Defries absence: a singer whose fame far
outstripped Bowies, and who was also attempting
to extricate himself from his contract. That singer
was Stevie Wonder, Motowns one-time child star,
who would come of age in May 1971, and would
be entitled to all of the royalties hed accrued over
the last eight years, with his contract up for
renewal. Both the size of the prize, and the
challenge of taking on Motown, became an
obsession for Defries, who spent most of the
winter planning his assault on the Detroit label.
Saddled with an absentee manager, abandoned
by the collaborators hed relied on so heavily, and
with all the momentum of his one truly great song
seemingly lost, David Bowie was finally, but for
his wife, standing alone. The experience would
reveal both of them at their best. However
celebrated their relationship during the media

saturation of the Ziggy years, it was in the

obscurity of 1971 that the pair forged a new
lifestyle. Abandoned, free, the pair were reborn,
reinvented.
For David, his isolation, in the insulated
microclimate of Haddon Hall, brought out shadows
of the earnest, punctual, hard-working teenager. If
other people werent going to help him complete
his songs, then hed do so by himself. And all those
hard-earned lessons, the songs pieced painfully
together with The Lower Third, the home-made
arrangements cooked up with the Observers book
of music, the chords hed worked out alongside
Mick Ronson, would finally cohere in the
consciousness of David Bowie, showbiz trouper.
With the faint-hearted supporters stripped away,
it was Angie who formed the bounds of Davids
world. The hostess of Haddon Hall ministered to
Davids every need: brought him breakfast in bed,
made him endless cups of tea, or ran out for
cigarettes. She would talk to Defries to keep him
interested, and then she would call Bob Grace and

tell him, Oh youre wonderful, I dont know what

wed do without you, before confiding in him, I
hate this management. She loved being at the
centre of events, planning schemes, such as using
Dana Gillespie Davids teenage girlfriend, who
had now reappeared on the scene in the hope of
encouraging Defries to visit Haddon Hall.
The departure of The Hype brought another
benefit. Tony and Lizs old room was now empty,
so David moved a piano into the light and airy
space, which looked out on the garden. It was a
battered, old upright that sounded like an ancient
pub honky tonk; David would sit at it for hours,
obsessively working out runs. Compared to writing
on the Hagstrom twelve-string that Ken Pitt had
bought him, working out new songs on the piano
was hard, painstaking work, but it also allowed
him to fit together the harmonic elements in an
entirely new way. Over days and weeks he
laboured, obsessively, working out songs, and in
the process completely reworking his own
approach to songwriting. The writing sessions
were legendary, says Mark Pritchett, whose band

Runk would test-drive Davids songs. They could

b e hours at a time. Angie might say, Were
scheduled to do this. Hed be, Im not doing it.
Im doing this. Just to get the runs right. And when
he got it he was crazed. He was on top of the
world.
Today David explains, almost regretfully, how
hard he had to work. I forced myself to become a
good songwriter and I became a good
songwriter. I made a job of work at getting good.
David had been raised on rock stars who, like
Elvis, seemed to emerge fully-formed, instinctive
geniuses who could pick up a microphone and
transform the world. David might have been born
on Elviss birthday, but he wasnt gifted with the
same instinctive talent. His regret expresses how
gruelling the journey was to be, until he forced
himself to become talented.
But being made, not born, also offered
boundless opportunities. Having built up a
technique from scratch once, he could do it again.
The piano was a new beginning: a new channel for
the ideas flooding out of Bowies consciousness.

Songs came together differently on a keyboard;

more fluid, based on runs rather than static chords.
His writing would be dominated by the new
instrument for the next six years: the most creative
six years of his career. Bowies piano playing
might have been bad, in drummer Henry
Spinettis words, but his writing was
sophisticated; fragments of Weimar or Sinatra
songs were incorporated into the harmonic
bonanza, clues that Bowie was driven more by
showbiz traditions than by rock n roll. In some
respects, this represented a return to the
eclecticism and originality of his Deram days. But
back then his ambition far outstripped his abilities.
This time around, he could realise his most
audacious musical ideas with a minimum of help.
Bob Grace was staggered by Bowies sheer
graft throughout this new phase. This was the
most hard-working guy talk about diligent, he
redefined the word. Grace would hear the results
at his office, and found a cheap demo studio at
Radio Luxembourg, where they could record the
songs fresh, as they came spilling out. Here David

would work up songs with Runk soon to be

renamed Arnold Corns or drummer Henry
Spinetti, who still remembers Davids charm in
talking him into doing sessions for free.
David and Angies world was tiny, intimate; as
far as work went, they latched on to Grace,
monopolising him, jealous of others demands on
his time, travelling to and from Beckenham in cabs
they sneaked on to the Chrysalis account. When
David wasnt closeted at the keyboard, hed often
be found in mechanics overalls, underneath his
car; over this period, thanks to his publishing
income, he progressed from a one-anda-half-litre
black fifties Riley, to a two-and-a-half-litre red
version, and finally an 1100cc Riley Gamecock, a
wood-framed 1930s racer. It was probably this
latter machine that rolled into David, impaling his
leg on the starting handle. The incident was
witnessed by the Lewisham police, who found the
sight of the exotic, curly-haired youth skewered by
his own car hilarious. David spent a week in
hospital recovering.
As David and Angie drew Grace into their

world, Grace was as taken by Bowies

wonderfully dry humour as his skills as a motor
mechanic. He was also disorientated by their
obsession with taking him to celebrated gay clubs
like Yours Or Mine, usually referred to as the
Sombrero, or gay movies, or to see flamboyantly
gay friends like Freddie Buretti and Mickey King,
all in an attempt to get him, says Grace, to
embrace his trip.
Davids trip his lifestyle had blossomed,
thanks to Angies encouragement. Hed been
hanging out at gay clubs since his Mod days, but by
the time he hooked up with Calvin Lee, the scene
had moved upmarket to the Kensington and Notting
Hill arty set. Although this time has always been
painted as his Warhol period Bowies circle was
quintessentially English straight out of Noel
Coward or Quentin Crisp. Americans who came
visiting would be disorientated by the bisexual
vibe; acquaintances like Ossie Clarke, who briefly
shared a boyfriend with Calvin Lee, was married
to a woman he adored, Celia Birtwell, whom he
suspected of two-timing him with his celebrated

gay friend and rival, David Hockney. Lionel Bart

was another: famously devoted to Alma Cogan, he
would often be seen with a rent boy in tow, or
snuggled up to David. In fact, apart from the
inferior dental-work, for Americans this scene was
far more glamorous than back home. Everyone
was a dandy, so much better dressed than in New
York, observes one visitor, Tony Zanetta. It was
only later that he noticed that nearly every clubgoer owned just the one suit, which on inspection
was often slightly grubby, like the impressive
facade of a country house which conceals the
genteel poverty within.
Future commentators would wonder whether
Davids gay persona was sincere and genuine.
Robert Kensell, a good-looking party animal with
a passing resemblance to Terence Stamp, was part
of the Sombrero scene with his friend Jonathan
Barber, one of Calvin Lees lovers. Kensell later
built a thriving business as house cocaine dealer
to musicians at Olympic Studios, but in those early
days Jonathan and he would bed-hop for food and
fun, sponging off hosts like Ossie, Lionel or Kit

Lambert. Remember, in 1970 you couldnt talk

about something, unless youd done it, he points
out. David wasnt just part of the scene. He was at
the centre of it.
Davids flings with men were usually shortlived; the thrill was usually in the discovery. His
bisexuality was part of his appeal for many
Sombrero boys very manly is how one
scenester describes him and at least some of his
obsession with the scene was, says Bob Grace,
down to Mick Jagger. Jagger was a role model
not an idol, says Bob Grace, who explains that
despite a lack of any supporting evidence, David
was convinced he was bisexual.
One of the Sombrero clientele that David loved
pointing out with the words, Look, isnt he
gorgeous? was Freddie Buretti. Freddie was fully
six feet tall, with Caravaggio-esque good looks,
and worked for a Kensington fashion retailer. One
evening in 1971 he had a brush with the law,
charged for importuning after, he said, having sex
with the arresting officer. Bob Grace was called in
to post bail, and despite the aggravation, had a

sneaking respect for the way that Freddie insisted

on listing his occupation as seamstress. Usually
Freddie was seen hanging out with Daniella
Parmar, his girlfriend. She was the first girl I
had seen with peroxide white hair with cartoon
images cut and dyed into the back, David
remembers. Blessed with absolute style, she
unwittingly changed so much of how female Britain
looked after my then-wife copied her sense of
style. The ambiguity of Daniella and Freddies
relationship was part of the vibe. Another of
Davids protgs was Mickey King again, David
loved to imply Mickey was another bed-mate, it
was all part of the confusion. As was the sight of
Angie, with scraped-back hair, in an impeccably
tailored suit, chatting up women at the Sombrero.
Freddie, thanks to his design skills, became a
semi-permanent member of the team along with
Daniella. Mickey would drop in and out of Haddon
Hall, as he did the rent-boy scene; ultimately, he
would die in mysterious circumstances stabbed
by a jealous john, say his Haddon Hall friends.
The kinky, noisy buzz around Haddon Hall

inspired Davids buoyant mood, which was

untroubled by the mess at Mercury and Philips.
Although the English version of The Man Who
Sold the World languished in limbo until next
April, delayed by the political changes at Philips,
the Americans were keen to release the album.
Mercurys Robin McBride flew over that winter to
collect the masters and artwork directly from
Bowie. David handed him two illustrations by Arts
Lab regular Mike Weller, which depicted Cane
Hill later to be replaced by a photo of David
reclining at Haddon Hall in his Mr Fish dress.
Soon Davids London press contacts would be
informed that the album was being acclaimed in
America a sudden holocaust. The reality was
rather more modest. Davids American fans were
mainly confined to Mercury staff, principally the
newly appointed press officer Ron Oberman, who,
as torch-carrier for David, arranged a US
promotional tour for The Man Who Sold the
World, from 27 January, 1971.
David arrived unaccompanied for his first trip to

the USA Angie was five months pregnant and

decided to remain at Haddon Hall. He was in his
element travelling solo, un-phased by his reception
at Dulles, where Immigration detained him for an
hour, suspicious of his fey manner and flowing
pre-Raphaelite locks. For some reason, they
seemed to think I looked strange, he informed Ron
Oberman, whod been waiting in the terminal for
an hour. He spent the next few days bubbling with
the enthusiasm of a child, accompanied by Ron to
radio and press interviews in Washington DC and
Chicago, partying, or going out for meals with
Rons parents, who found him every bit as
charming as the Manish Boys parents had, a
decade before. Oberman soon picked up on
Davids tastes, taking him up to 54th Street to see
Moondog, the poet, musician and outsider who
lived on the street, clad in Viking garb. David
chatted to him, intently, fetching him coffee and
sandwiches. When Ron was busy, David wandered
around New York alone and was thrilled to see,
the weekend after his arrival, that The Velvet
Underground were playing the Electric Circus. He

was transfixed by their renditions of new songs

like Sweet Jane, venturing upstairs to chat to Lou
Reed after the show, telling him how he admired
his songwriting and had covered Waiting for the
Man. Only later did he find out that Lou had left
the band the previous autumn, and the man hed
talked to in the legendary Dom was in fact Doug
Yule. David found the notion that the Velvets could
be duplicated, like a Coke can or a soup tin,
enthralling: maybe the fake Lou was as authentic as
the real thing? When he wasnt discussing such
concepts with Ron, he picked his brains on how
the US music industry worked, quizzing him on the
company politics of Mercury and other labels.
Where the East Coast was graced by the earnest,
purposeful David Bowie, the West Coast was
treated to a more decadent version. Writer John
Mendelssohn arrived at LAX to meet the singer,
who got off the plane wearing a Mr Fish dress,
looking disconcertingly like Lauren Bacall. Mick
Jagger had helped publicise the kipper-tie
designers dresses for men, most famously at the
Stones Hyde Park show in 1969. Davids

interpretation of the same look was radically more

feminine his dress was more ornate, while his
curly afro had grown out, and now his hair
cascaded in waves over his shoulders.
Mendelssohn was disturbed to find his chivalrous
instincts aroused by this glamorous apparition;
soon he and his friend were struggling with
Davids trunk so extraordinarily heavy they
speculated he was smuggling a piano. David
sashayed along behind them, murmuring Oh dear!
every now and then; the perfect, helpless flutterylashed ingnue. Mendelssohn had agreed to write a
story on the English singer for Rolling Stone, but
was so intimidated by this exotic creature that he
could only think of the most inarticulate, mumbled
questions, all of which David treated as if they
were the most profound example of the
inquisitorial arts.
Later that evening, some of Mendelssohns
verve returned when the two arrived at the Holiday
Inn and found the hotels facilities had been
augmented with a girl, whod been provided for
Bowie by the future Mayor of the Sunset Strip,

Rodney Bingenheimer.
Mercurys radio promotions man on the West
Coast, Bingenheimer had been abandoned by his
mother in Hollywood as a teenager, but his
enthusiasm for rock n roll and frank adoration of
celebrity soon helped him become sidekick to
Sonny and Cher, and later one of the leading
scenesters. Rodney was famous as, in friend and
rival Kim Fowleys words, purveyor of a posse
of pussy a skill he proved by sending the girl
like a welcoming present, says Mendelssohn. As
Mendelssohn and Bowie reclined in the Holiday
Inn lounge, listening incredulously to a hilarious
lounge duo called The Brass Doubles an organist
and drummer, who each played their main
instrument one-handed while doubling on trumpet
they competed for Rodneys girl. David won out,
chatting away relentlessly in a deadpan, Jaggeresque drawl. Finally, she accepted Davids offer
to come up to me room for some guitar lessons?
*
Like many Englishmen before and since, David
discovered the possibilities offered in the new

continent of reinventing oneself, aided by an exotic

accent. His skills at enchanting and confusing all
onlookers blossomed; resplendent in his dress, or
other exotic outfits, he perfected the knack of
monopolising peoples attentions. At one
legendary party hosted by Tom Ayers, one of
Rodneys innumerable music-biz friends, he
hovered by the door, greeting guests, outraging the
elderly ladies, enchanting the groupies and Valley
girls. In between chatting to Bingenheimer, and
working his wiles on a sixteen-year-old called
Kasha (who had certainly the most beautiful
breasts on the West Coast, sighs Mendelssohn)
Bowie had a short conversation with Ayers, who
was a house producer for RCA. David mentioned
his problems with Mercury, and Ayers told him to
look at RCA, saying, The only thing theyve got
is Elvis and Elvis cant last for ever.
It was a short, but momentous exchange. The
idea of supplanting the King of Rock n Roll,
whose birthday he shared, who had inspired him as
a kid, would at one time have seemed ridiculous.
Now an insider from Elviss own company was

suggesting the company would be lucky to have

him. Riding on a wave of energy, of excitement at
the sights and sounds of California, and the
enthusiasm of the small gaggle of Hollywood
insiders, David started contemplating, for the first
time, the prospect of conquering America.
Even the mundane promotional visits were
enjoyable. He and John Mendelssohn spent an
afternoon driving up to San Jose for a radio
interview, talking nonsense and singing their own
reworking of Edwin Starrs War, with the words,
Tits! What are they good for? When they arrived
at the station and started chatting, they found the
West Coast hippie DJ was sneering and suspicious
of the camp, obscure English singer. Bowie was
cheery, unintimidated, his deadpan humour in full
flow, and when the DJ asked him to suggest a track
to play, he instantly sealed his decadent credentials
with a languid request for anything by The Velvet
Underground.
As the show ran on, Mendelssohn was looking
through the record racks when he spotted a copy of
The Stooges, the debut album by Michigans punk

pioneers, notorious for having crashed and burned

in a haze of heroin that year. Intrigued, David
chose I Wanna Be Your Dog for his next
selection. When the songs moronically
monumental riff and Iggy Pops deadpan drawl
blared from the studio speakers, Davids amused
energy seemed to intensify. As they drove back,
Mendelssohn told him about The Stooges singer,
Iggy, whod arrived on the West Coast that summer
his only clothing some ripped jeans, one change
of underwear and a pair of silver lam gloves
and shocked crowds: pulling a girl out of the
audience by her face, or dripping melted wax on
his chest. David hung on his every word.
Iggy and The Stooges became a near-obsession
over the following months, part of a cornucopia of
influences that he soaked up like a sponge, the
more outr or outrageous, the better. In Chicago,
Ron Oberman had played him a crazed record
called Paralyzed by the Legendary Stardust
Cowboy David loved it and took a copy of the
45 home with him, along with a stack of albums
by Kim Fowley, another West Coast eccentric.

When David returned to Britain, he was

buzzing with the sounds and the sights hed
encountered, completely re-energised according to
his neighbour Mark Pritchett, who was given four
Kim Fowley albums from the stash David brought
home. The Stooges two albums were constantly
spinning on Davids turntable, and had an
immediate effect. One of the first songs he wrote
after his return was Moonage Daydream:
stripped-down and less wordy than his recent
efforts, its put your electric eye on me, babe
name-checked The Stooges song T.V. Eye. In
April, David worked the song up with Pritchetts
band, Runk. (For many years, legend would have it
they were The Spiders in disguise, thanks to the
improbably monikered drummer Timothy James
Ralph St Laurent Thomas Moore Broadbent, and
bassist Peter De Somogyi, Pritchetts blue-blooded
Dulwich College schoolmates.) The song was
written on guitar, and when the trio recorded it at
Luxembourg Studios with David, he was
painstaking about every detail, singing out the
middle instrumental section, an homage to one of

Kim Fowleys songs with the Hollywood Argyles

ensemble, but used here, says guitarist Mark
Pritchett, for a Berthold Brecht effect like a
funfair with camp overtones.
When it came to selling the song, it got camper
still, when David recruited Freddie Buretti as a
lead singer, posing with him and Bob Grace for
photos as the band Arnold Corns, for a single
released on the tiny B&C soul label. In an
interview for Sounds, David touted Freddie, or
Rudi, as the new Mick Jagger, despite the fact his
voice was barely audible on the record. But that
wasnt the point; the music, rushed as the recording
was, signalled a new simplicity which was being
sold with a new flamboyance. The serious, rather
worthy David Bowie whod extolled the virtues of
the Arts Lab was being consigned to history.
Moonage Daydream, together with Hang onto
Yourself, written over the same period, were all
the more impressive for being kept in reserve.
Instead, it was a third song, written just a few
weeks before, which signalled the beginning of the
most crucial winning streak of Davids life.

The new songs origins echoed, almost

spookily, two other songs that transformed their
composers
careers.
Paul
McCartneys
Yesterday arrived in a dream, marking the point
at which he would assume joint leadership of The
Beatles. So did Keith Richards Satisfaction,
which he woke up humming one night in a Florida
motel, and which would become the Stones first
US number one. The song which was lodged in
David Bowies mind when he woke one morning
early in January 1971 would stay just two places
outside the Top 10. But it was just as pivotal.
Bob Grace was the first person to hear the news,
when the phone rang at the start of a busy day. I
woke up at 4 oclock, David told him. Had this
song going in my head and I had to get out of bed,
work it out on the piano and get it out of my head
so I could go back to sleep.
Whats it called? asked Grace.
Oh! You Pretty Things.
David insisted he needed to demo the song
straight away, and Grace worked out that they
could piggyback on a session booked for a radio

interview at the Radio Luxembourg studios. There

was no time to call in Tim Broadbent or Henry
Spinetti, so David recorded the song solo, the only
accompaniment the jangling of the bracelets he was
wearing. Grace had become close friends with
Bowie by now, drawn into his web. After
pronouncing the song stunning, he felt compelled
to recruit more supporters to the Bowie cause. The
best contender he could think of was Mickie Most,
still the UKs best-known independent producer,
who he knew would be at that years MIDEM
festival in Cannes, just a few days away.
With the rendezvous organised, Grace played
the acetate for Mickie on a tiny Dansette player in
a booth at the festival. He was nervous and
would been even more nervous had he known that
Most had turned down David Bowie twice during
the preceding years. David had not breathed a
word about these earlier failures.
Publishers folklore was that if Most listened to
more than ten seconds of a song you had a chance.
Grace paced around nervously as the famously
opinionated producer listened to the entire song,

waited until the fade-out, then announced: Smash!

He told Grace the song would be perfect to launch
the solo career of Peter Noone, from Hermans
Hermits uncool as they were, the Hermits were
one of Mosts biggest acts, and this was a huge
coup. The fact that the song had arrived, almost
fully formed, from Davids unconscious
demonstrated how, after five years of writing
songs, he had bypassed the critical part of his
consciousness. Before his writing had been
considered; now it was inspired.
Plenty of other songs demoed at Radio
Luxembourg showed how the short US trip had
provided David with a store of images to draw on.
A theme was emerging. David was a pro, a man
who knew how to work the system, but had an
instinctive sympathy for those who couldnt, those
practitioners of what writer Irwin Chusid terms
Outsider Music; erratic people like Syd Barrett,
Iggy Pop, Moondog or Stardust Cowboy Norman
Carl Odam. David would follow their star-crossed
careers, and their fate infuses songs like the

gorgeous Lady Stardust, demoed on 10 March,

along with an early version of Moonage
Daydream, and the wonderfully hokey Right On
Mother, also destined for Peter Noone.
At the same time that David was laying the bedrock of his future music, he was focusing just as
diligently on reinventing his image, and, more
specifically, consigning the past to oblivion. Bill
Harry, childhood friend of John Lennon and
founder of Mersey Beat magazine, was one of
Londons busiest PRs; Bob Grace called him in,
explaining that Davids career had stalled, and
they were trying to generate some momentum.
Harry and Bowie spent days closeted together,
talking about science fiction a mutual obsession
music and photography. Harry knew many rock
n rollers, but none of them had as sophisticated a
sense of visuals: Bowie brought in mood-boards of
photos and glossy magazine cuttings, photos of
movie stars and Egyptian pharaohs to illustrate
photographic ideas, and together they plotted to
airbrush Davids past.
Harry helped push The Man Who Sold the

World, which finally made it to the shelves in

Britain that April, but Bowies eyes were fixed
firmly beyond that release. Armed with a stack of
glossy photos taken by the Chrysalis photographer
Brian Ward, Bowie and Harry did the rounds of
Fleet Street and the music press. While Bill sat in
the office, chatting, David would go to the filing
cabinet, pull out the old shots of the curly-headed
Space Oddity Bowie and replace them with the
new session, banishing the one-shot wonder to
oblivion. He was planning ahead. He didnt seem
part of the normal culture at all, sitting around in a
pub or club and getting boozed up; he was
collecting together images for the future, says
Harry.
Their campaign reaped immediate results: a
spread in the Daily Mirror, plus stories in the
Daily Express and the music press. The stories
paved the way for Peter Noones single of Oh!
You Pretty Things with David contributing a
strident, bouncing piano which hit the Top 40 on
22 May, peaking at number twelve. The lumpy,
pedestrian arrangement failed to hamper the songs

gorgeously inventive melody, which was as fleet

of foot as White Album-era McCartney; Peter
Noone went into print praising David Bowie as the
finest songwriter since Lennon and McCartney.
Suddenly, the one-hit wonder was the new kid on
the block.
Bob Grace, the man who had helped engineer
this career turnaround, was overjoyed: this was
what hed joined Chrysalis for, to take an artist
from demo to limo, as the slang had it. When
Terry Ellis, his boss, called him in to his office,
with the song still at its chart peak, he walked in to
the room expecting a promotion and a pay rise.
Instead, Ellis was red-faced with rage. This is a
disaster! Ellis yelled. Youve ruined the image of
my company. The Chrysalis Music label on a pop
record! How dare you? Furthermore I have a
manager outside, Tony Defries, whos absolutely
furious.
Defries walked in, and the conversation turned
into a heated argument, with Defries accusing
Grace of trying to poach his artist, while Grace
countered, If you did more for him, hed stop

hassling me so much! Bill Harry had a similar

encounter, accused of interfering, and when
Defries announced, From now on, all interviews
must be conducted from my office, Harry quit as
Davids PR.
Today, Bill Harry insists that Defries could
never measure up to other managers he worked
with, like Led Zeppelins famously aggressive
Peter Grant. I couldnt work with Defries. I found
him quite unpleasant, and inflexible. But Harry
and Bob Graces accusations that Defries had left
Bowie to fend for himself would not be repeated,
for in the forthcoming weeks, Tony Defries would
reinvent himself as completely as his client.
David Bowie had fought his way back into
contention, more or less unaided. But Defries was
the man whod build an army behind him.
Tony Defries was already an expert in reinvention
and repackaging. Born in 1943, reputedly near a
secret airfield in north London, and just five years
older than David, he claimed to have had a similar,
fractured childhood and viewed his life in a

similar, almost mythical sense. His grandparents

had fled from Russia, and the young Defries had,
he would tell listeners, been put into care for a
year when he was just a few months old; a
devastating experience, during which he clinically
died at one point from an asthma attack. Like
David, he was conscious of growing up amid
wartime ruins, in his own case as part of a Jewish
family living on its wits in Shepherds Bush,
dodging gangs of Irish, Greek and Turkish
Cypriots, whilst building a business selling
factory-reject china and other oddments. He and
his brother Nicholas soon discovered that an
average brace of duelling pistols could be
transformed into a desirable rarity once packaged
in a convincingly antiqued wooden box; they were
selling a fantasy, and in much the same way,
Defries, who left school at fourteen, would act as a
lawyer, and then a manager.
Tonys unique life was carved out in a British
society in a state of flux, with the aristocracy trying
to pawn its possessions, and European families
trying to reclaim their own inheritance, looted by

the Nazis. In this chaos, empires could be rebuilt,

and Defries planned to be at the head of one. Even
his many detractors concede he was shrewd; he
was also fearless, and would go straight to the top
of whatever company he was dealing with to cut a
deal. Just a few years older than many of his
clients, he was nonetheless a big daddy figure, as
Dana Gillespie puts it, whod look after them and
shield them from all earthly worries. Modelling
himself on Colonel Parker, he told David that he
would make his proteg famous as a one-name
star like Elvis or Dylan: a monolithically famous
performer, known simply as Bowie.
The nature of Defries and Bowies professional
relationship would often be misunderstood, not
least by David, despite the fact it was legally
documented. Defries did not work for David:
David worked for him. In Davids ten-year
contract as a singer and songwriter, signed on 31
March, 1972, with Defries newly established
MainMan empire, the artist is defined as an
Employee. The schedule to the contract also
includes the details of Davids separate

management deal with Tony Defries, signed the

previous August. The term of the contract, it states
in bold black and white, is timeless.
Defries explains his remoteness in the spring of
1971 by the fact he was simply waiting for
Davids Mercury contract to expire. A more
pressing reason was doubtless his involvement
with Stevie Wonder. By May, and the Oh! You
Pretty Things breakthrough, Defries Detroit
mission had stalled and Wonder had agreed to
renew his deal with Motown. David Bowie was
therefore back to being his best bet. But if Defries
had waited until the last minute to bet on Bowie,
when the moment came, he would bet big. And
Defries was betting with much more than money
(which came, in any case, from Laurence Myers).
He bet his professional life. From the moment he
fully engaged himself in Bowies career, there was
never any doubt that the fates of these two men
were intertwined.
Anya Wilson was the radio plugger whod
helped drive Marc Bolans Ride a White Swan
to number two, and was hired by Defries to repeat

her feat for Bowie. I had more than one knot in my

stomach working for Tony, believe me, says
Wilson. He was very focused on what he wanted.
I got fired several times, but he would rehire me a
couple of weeks later and pay me back pay. But
when he was locked in it was absolute. There was
never any doubt. It was very infectious.
Defries was ready to bide his time until the end
of June, when Mercury could exercise their option
on David, but from May onwards he worked
closely, plotting with Bowie and Bob Grace. It
was the publisher, with Anya Wilson, who secured
another slot on the BBCs In Concert series,
which would be a key signpost of what was to
come.
The growing sense of event was heightened with
the news that Angie had given birth to Duncan
Zowie Haywood Bowie at Bromley Hospital on
30 May, after a drawn-out labour. David was there
for the birth, which further sealed Angies position
as queen to Bowies king. But Angie, who freely
admits, I was not the maternal type, would later
pinpoint the aftermath of the birth as a dark portent

for their relationship. Zowie named after the

Greek word for life was a chunky eight and a
half pounds, and Angie suffered a cracked pelvis,
blood loss, exhaustion and what sounds like
classic post-natal depression. A few weeks after
the birth, Dana Gillespie persuaded Angie to join
her for a trip to her parents summer villa in Italy.
Angie recruited the redoubt able Suzi Frost,
henceforth an integral part of the household, to
look after Zowie during her absence, and
remembers David hardly raising an eyebrow at her
departure. Years later, though, shed speculate that
David, for all his sexual non-conformity, retained
some distinctly old-school family values and
regarded the trip as an unforgivable desertion.
Yet for those around them, the birth and
surrounding events seemed largely idyllic, with
Angie continuing to provide a protective cocoon
around David in which he could create. The
impression of a domestic idyll was cemented with
Davids song Kooks, which asked their baby,
Will you stay in our Lovers story? Written after
David had spent the day listening to Neil Youngs

After the Goldrush, its jiggling piano feel was

based on Youngs Till the Morning Comes, with
its central lyric quoting the Young title I Believe
in You. Then, as now, its a delightful song: deft,
light-hearted, totally without artifice.
The song made its public debut a couple of days
after it was written, at the BBC In Concert, on 3
June, 1971. Like most of the key events in Davids
life, the show was pulled together almost randomly
at the last moment. Late in May, David booked
bassist Herbie Flowers and guitarist Tim Renwick
for the appearance. Renwick had been an
occasional visitor to Haddon Hall; David, says
Juniors Eyes singer Graham Kelly, was fascinated
by the guitarist indeed, Kelly maintains that
Davids Lauren Bacall persona derived from the
Marlene Dietrich impression that Renwick often
performed as a party piece. Renwick appears on at
least one long-lost song from that summer Hole
in the Ground, with Herbie on bass and George
Underwood, who had not completely given up on
music, on vocals but his role as Davids sideman
evaporated at the last moment, when David phoned

Mick Ronson. The two had kept in touch over

recent months David took a small crew of
Haddon Hall regulars down to Ronnos London
showcase at Lower Temple and Mick seized the
chance, for the bands undistinguished single on
Vertigo had sunk without trace. Ronson brought all
his musicians down the A1; they arrived on the 5th
and had one afternoon to rehearse. For Ronson,
Woodmansey and bassist Trevor Bolder who
had joined Ronno only recently the one afternoon
was an impromptu, scary, electrifying start to a
journey that would stay that way.
Their nervousness was useful, forcing them to
come up with ideas, and most of the off-the-cuff
riffs they pulled together would survive on
Davids upcoming album. David exuded happiness
and positivity: overjoyed both with the arrival of
Zowie and the thrill of creation. There was no
overlooking his nervous energy, but he projected
the conviction that this was meant to be; this was
his man-child quality, that incredible sense of
focus and belief that everything was simple.
The show united Haddon Hall regulars like

Mark Pritchett, George Underwood and Davids

schoolmate Geoff MacCormack, with Ronsons
band, whose singer Benny Marshall guested on a
cover of Chuck Berrys Almost Grown. The Hull
musicians were nervous as hell, yet much of the
party atmosphere that is audible on the shows
recording is genuine. At times, the vibe was
surprisingly intimate as in the rendition of
Kooks, dedicated to the new Bowie child, and
jokey interactions with John Peel yet from the
moment David walked into the dressing room
wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and out of it wearing
his Mr Fish dress, exuding glamour, there was no
doubt that this was an accomplished coup de
thtre. At the end, David tearfully apologised to
producer Jeff Griffin that hed completely messed
up the vocal on Oh! You Pretty Things. It hadnt
even registered, says Griffin. Then once the show
was over, David forgot this blip, and was
consumed by his next project.
In future years, people would refer to Bowies
mindset during that summer as positive

visualisation. He announced the title of his next

album, Hunky Dory, on the BBC at a time when the
album was still a pipe-dream, and he was still tied
to a record company he hated. The title came from
a catchphrase of Peter Shoot, larger-than-life exRAF owner of one of Bob Graces favourite pubs,
The Bear in Esher: It will either be a disaster, or
everything will be hunky dory.
David loved the phrase. This time around,
everything would be hunky dory. He talked about
producing other acts as if he already had a stars
magic touch. And he laid out the future for the band
who had been with him for only a few days, telling
them about the two albums they would make in
forthcoming months, with a new record company,
the venues they would play at the start of the
coming onslaught, and where they would end up.
He had it all in his head, says bassist Trevor
Bolder. And then he cited each part of where he
was going to be.
Tony Defries was the other master of positive
visualisation. He too would lay out the future in
front of them as if it were a map. A key part of his

strategy was to cut record companies out of the

creative loop; Defries had the means to do that, for
he would fund Davids next album independently
before dispensing with Mercury and before
approaching RCA giving David, as opposed to
the record company, control of his own music.
This was an unprecedented commitment; as his
future lieutenant, Tony Zanetta, points out, Tony
threw the book out the window. He loved to take
huge gambles. Although of course it was
Laurences money that he was gambling with.
For David to realise his vision, he had to have
the best. That included the studio, Trident, already
familiar to David, but then at its height of
popularity after its conversion to a state-of-the-art
twenty-four tracks. Tridents main engineer, Ken
Scott, was fast becoming, says Grace, the hot guy
at the time, primarily thanks to his work on
George Harrisons All Things Must Pass. Scott got
on well with David, who decided to share the
production role with him. In June, David, Grace,
Ken Scott and Mick Ronson assembled at Scotts
house in Catford, south-east London to select an

albums worth of material from the Radio

Luxembourg demos.
Scott had engineered Davids last two albums,
and agreed to the producers role, figuring hed
gain useful experience. I thought David was good,
but hed never be a superstar. This would be the
perfect time to practise production, so if I fucked
up it wouldnt really matter. But when we were
sitting there listening to those demos, this lightbulb
went on. I thought, Bloody hell! This is for real!
Some kind of floodgate had been unlocked, so
much so that Star, Moonage Daydream and
Lady Stardust were among the high-quality
compositions saved for a later day, for there was a
conscious decision to build the new album around
the piano. The three standout songs Oh! You
Pretty Things, Changes and Life On Mars?
all featured broadly similar piano runs, rolling
forward with an irresistible momentum, but each
boasted distinct, gorgeously memorable melodies.
The contrast with Space Oddity could not be
more pronounced; whereas the melody on that song
was constrained, claustrophobic, Hunky Dorys

standout melodies were fluid, swooping over an

octave or more. Life On Mars? is a typical
example, cheekily based on the chord sequence of
Comme dHabitude, aka My Way, a song for
which David had once crafted a set of lyrics at the
behest of Ken Pitt. His attempts were rejected, and
if the setback had rankled, then revenge was sweet,
for the new song was grandiose, its melody
arguably superior to Jacques Revauxs original.
The main tune arrived in Bowies head on the bus
to Lewisham to buy some shoes: he hopped off the
bus, more or less loped back to Haddon Hall and
completed the song by the late afternoon. The
lyrics were enigmatic, a succession of fragmentary
images witnessed by the girl with the mousy hair,
rather in the style of McCartneys Eleanor Rigby.
Only when we reach the chorus, with an octave
leap over the words life on Mars?, do we realise
the song is about a yearning for escape, or
transcendence. Its a thrilling trick and a solidly
traditional one, drawing on songwriters like
Harold Arlen.
Davids three previous albums had all been

complicated recordings, overshadowed by

politics. With Hunky Dory, David set out to satisfy
himself, not record company executives: a freedom
reflected in the albums freshness. The recording
process was simple, dominated by Davids childlike optimism and focus much of which came
from the reassuring presence of Mick Ronson, who
as arranger carried the burden of translating the
songs from piano sketches to luscious epics.
Mick didnt share Davids sense of calm. He
had taken some refresher piano lessons on his
return to Hull; nonetheless, the assignment was far
scarier than anything David had thrown at him so
far. Although David did occasionally lose his
composure shouting, Just play the song right!
when the rhythm section messed up a take of Song
for Bob Dylan he was masterful at motivating
people, pushing Mick forward, challenging him,
Go on, do it! If it doesnt work out it doesnt work
out but have a go! Mick impressed both Ken
Scott and Bob Grace with his quiet efficiency, but
Ronsons friend Trevor Bolder noticed the
guitarist was a bag of nerves. While Bowie sat in

the Trident control room, looking down on the

recording area, Ronson would be on the studio
floor, checking though manuscript pages, nervously
dragging on one after another of his trademark rollups; close up, you could see his hands shaking. But
there was little time to worry, for the sessions
were rushed and David was impatient. For the
songs where he played piano, there would
sometimes be just a couple of run-throughs, and
then the band would have to find their own way
through, like session musicians, living on their
wits. It was always on the edge, wondering if they
would make it through, says Scott. Occasionally
they would have a rest, watching Rick Wakeman
overdub piano parts at Tridents celebrated
Bechstein, on which McCartney had pounded out
Hey Jude.
At first, the musicians wondered if Davids
impatience derived from a selfish desire to
monopolise the studio time for his own singing, but
it turned out he only required a couple of takes to
nail a perfect vocal, his microphone technique
perfected by years of experience. He was unique,

says Scott, the only singer I ever worked with

where virtually every take was a master.
The truth was, he was simply burning to
download his work from his mind and commit it to
tape. The Bewlay Brothers, for instance, arrived
during an unsettled day and was recorded, solo,
later that evening. Its title derived from a cheap
old-fashioned pipe Bowie had once briefly owned,
and the lyrics were inscrutable even to their
creator. Dont listen to the words, they dont mean
anything, he told Scott as they prepared for a
vocal take. Ive just written them for the American
market, they like this kind of thing.
The albums lyrics which were dense with
allusions, with both Quicksand and The Bewlay
Brothers among his most evocative collection of
images usually came quickly (I cant remember
much redrafting at all, says Mark Pritchett). The
result was a dazzling collection of musical and
lyrical imagery. The songs obviously drew from
both traditional English and cutting-edge American
influences He stole from the best, as Trevor
Bolder puts it, reiterating Davids self-proclaimed

role as a tasteful thief but the borrowed riffs

and name-checking merely contributed to the
simple, child-like radiance. In his days around
Haddon Hall, playing with Zowie, tinkering with
his Riley, or flirting with Freddie, David had
forged a new manifesto, post-modern where you
could pick and choose from the works of Warhol
or Lou Reed, leaving the joins showing and postsexual, where the singer is free to play the role of
man, woman or child. Hunky Dory had the
unspoilt, overwhelming charm of a new beginning.
*
If Davids new record was naive and simple,
Defries means of selling it were hard-bitten
strictly old-school. The sessions were drawing to
a close before he ensured he was free to sell the
results to the record company of his choice. He and
Laurence Myers were already negotiating with
RCA, sending them over half of Hunky Dory,
before Defries set out to rid himself of Mercury.
Vice President Irwin Steinberg and A&R Robin
McBride had flown over to London in the happy
expectation of extending Davids contract to

include a third album for the label. Their fate was

like that of a general who has lost the battle before
his troops even take the field. We were totally
blindsided, says McBride, who had arranged
what he thought would be a pleasant lunch at the
Londonderry Hotel only for Defries, soberly
dressed and immaculately groomed, to bypass the
normal pleasantries and announce, David will
never record for you again. Instantly, Steinberg
pointed out David owed one more album under his
contract. If you insist on a third album, you will
get the biggest pile of shit ever seen on a record,
Defries responded. Steinberg was a brilliant, wellread man, McBride explains, but his instinct when
faced with an argument was to say fuck you and
walk away. Which is exactly what he did. If you
want a release, you will have to pay, he informed
Defries. You will have to refund Mercury for all
the recording expenses, all the art expenses, all the
packaging and promotional expenses that we have
undertaken on David Bowies behalf.
This was exactly the response that Defries had
hoped for; he assented to those costs, letting

Steinberg believe he had won. Only later did

McBride and Steinberg discover that David had
already recorded an album intended for another
label; only later did they realise that by buying
back the two Mercury albums at cost, Defries had
actually ended up making a huge amount of money.
McBride and Steinberg, music fans both, had been
taken, in the consummate example of Defries
aggression and brinksmanship. For both, it would
represent one of the most humiliating setbacks of
their careers.
Although he acknowledges that Defries did not
utter an untruth in that fateful meeting, McBride
found the encounter detestable, only rivalled by his
meeting with Dylans famously aggressive
manager, Albert Grossman. They have both
helped in the success of some terribly talented
people, he notes. But both personalities belonged
in the same garbage can.
As David finished Hunky Dory that summer,
Defries was developing an almost messianic sense
that he could remake the music industry, buoyed up
by his coup at Mercury. He and David were

hanging out together more and more, at the

Sombrero or back at Haddon Hall. Defries
disapproved of drug use, the mark of a loser, but
rapidly bought into the Bowie lifestyle, savouring
the exotic sexual frisson. David also shared Tonys
fascination with Americana and together they
became obsessed with the biggest coup: breaking
America. When Andy Warhols play Pork, which
so flagrantly symbolised this new world, debuted
in London that summer, it was natural that David
and Tony would come to witness the event. What
few could have predicted was how they would
adopt Warhols work, using it to sell America
back to itself.
Collaged from hundreds of hours of Andys
phone conversations by Tony Ingrassia a
graduate of the Theatre of the Ridiculous Pork
was scheduled to open on 2 August, and promised
a healthy dose of outrage. Two gorgeous nude
boys, the Pepsodent Twins, stood impassively on
stage throughout the show, while Amanda Pork
obviously based on Factory regular Brigid Polk
talked incessantly on the phone, frolicked topless,

masturbated and engaged in hilariously deadpan

conversations with the Andy Warhol character,
played with a languid precision by Tony Zanetta.
The play caused predictable outrage, inspiring a
Daily Mirror expos which ensured the
Roundhouse was packed for most performances.
The Warhol troupe were aware of David even
before theyd arrived in London. Theyd seen a
titillating news story complete with photo of
David in his Mr Fish dress in an issue of Rolling
Stone that had also featured Pork. Within days of
their arrival in London, stage manager Leee
Childers and Kathy Dorritie, who played Pork, hit
the town, looking for laughs or getting laid by
posing as journalists for Circus magazine. It was
Leee who spotted a tiny ad for a Bowie gig in the
NME, and set out with Kathy and Wayne County
(or Vulva Lips) for the Country Club in
Haverstock Hill, in search of the man in the
dress. Instead, he complained, they found a
folkie.
After the show, Leee and Kathy were initially
more taken with Angies energy and enthusiasm

than with the unassuming composure of the flaxenhaired folkie, but when the Warhol troupe were
invited to Haddon Hall after David, Angie and a
group of Gem regulars turned up for a performance
o f Pork a couple of days later, they found the
quiet and almost drab creature had
metamorphosed. Tony Zanetta, a kind of
simulacrum for Warhol, was the performer who
found himself fixed in Davids laser beam. He can
walk into the room and every single head would
turn and it was like a light was shining. It was
uncanny. They spent the evening locked in
conversation, talking about artifice, makeup,
glamour; Zanetta telling David about the Theatre of
the Ridiculous, while David reciprocated with
stories of his Lindsay Kemp days. David was
warm, unaffected, with an instinctive genius at
building rapport. Zanetta and the others were
fascinated by the singer; after their nights at the
Sombrero, and the spectacle of Haddon Hall, they
felt they had found kindred spirits, who shared
their almost child-like enthusiasms. Defries was as
fascinated as David; by now he luxuriated in the

atmosphere at the Sombrero, and the delicious

sensuality of being surrounded by Dana Gillespie,
whose career he also promised to take in hand.
Beyond his lofty talk, Defries was practical, too.
At the Haverstock Hill show on 26 July, David and
Micks sound was lousy, put to shame by the
support group, Tucky Buzzard. It turned out their
engineer, Robin Mayhew, was working with a new
kind of PA system that would allow a singer freerein to wander around the auditorium. Mayhew
was hired and told to build a new system: Sort it
out, Defries told him, it doesnt matter what it
costs. He hired Micks old Rats roadie, Peter
Hunsley, too, but there was a limit to his generosity
with Laurence Myers money. Whereas the roadcrew were kept on retainer, the musicians Trevor
Bolder and Woody Woodmansey were sent back
to Hull, while David and Defries prepared for
their trip to the New York offices of RCA in
September.
David was calm, self-possessed, free of selfdoubt. Defries was positively messianic, eager to
walk into the home of the King of Rock n Roll,

and tell them how much they needed him and his
client. He wasnt afraid to set his sights high.
Youve had nothing since the 1950s, and you
missed out on the sixties, he would tell RCA. But
you can own the 1970s. Because David Bowie is
going to remake the decade, just like The Beatles
did in the 1960s.

9
Over the Rainbow
It was, Ill do anything, play anything,
say anything, wear anything to become a
star. And theres nothing wrong with
that. And there was a tremendous hunger
on the part of the audience for it, too. It
was that moment in time.
Scott Richardson

Breaking America had been a staple of every

ambitious British rock n rollers career plan
since the days of The Shadows, in the early sixties.
David Bowie and Tony Defries arrived in New
York convinced of their ability to conquer the new
world. Given both their characters, that was no
surprise. But no one could have predicted how,

once in the country, their plans would become even

more grandiose.
Defries ensured that the September 1971 trip on
which he planned to close the RCA deal was
heavy with symbolism by staying at the Warwick
the hotel famous for hosting The Beatles and
holding court for a cavalcade of visitors to build
up a sense of event. Different people have different
perceptions of that week: Lisa Robinson, who was
central to the RCA signing, saw David as the star
of proceedings, boyish, enthused, with Defries
playing the role of Colonel Parker to Davids
Elvis. Lisa, her husband Richard, and many others
were caught in the spotlight of Davids charm,
which hed learned to focus with dazzling
effectiveness: hed pick words out of their
sentences and repeat them, as if they had
crystallised thoughts in his own mind, or when
bumping into them again, hed act as if he was
barely able to function in the intervening minutes.
Sometimes, talking to him, the objects of his
attention would experience that giddy, tingly
feeling you get when youre in love.

Others saw Tony Defries as the star of the show:

Tony Zanetta was enchanted by Bowie, but found
Defries had a unique sense of power emanating
from him. [He was] a magical person, he seemed
older than he was and very wise like a sage.
Dennis Katz, RCAs head of A&R, was keen to
close the deal. As Tom Ayers had told David, the
label had seen Elvis Presleys sales in seemingly
irreversible decline; Katz desperately needed new
talent and had been bowled over by an acetate of
the earlier Hunky Dory tracks. But it was Richard
and Lisa Robinson who would prove crucial to the
signing; the couple were arbiters of cool, RCAs
company heads. Richard had joined RCA as
house producer and Katzs assistant in A&R; his
wife Lisa was New Yorks hippest music
journalist; together they would prove Davids most
potent champions.
History rarely records Laurence Myers role in
the RCA signing; the Gem founder opened
negotiations with RCA, and oversaw the contract,
he says today. I actually did the deal I have to
point that out as its so rarely recognised! Yet it

was Defries who turned the signing into an event.

Defries was adept at homing in on RCAs
insecurities, commiserating with them that RCA
was best-known for producing washing machines.
But he was very, very charming about it,
everyone remembers. Even the money wasnt a
problem; RCA agreed to a $37,500 advance on
signature, a middling sum, but that didnt bother
Tony, says Zanetta, he always knew he could
improve on the deal later.
The RCA contract was signed on 9 September: a
coup for Defries, whod promised David he would
relaunch his career. But that was not enough. For
over two days, 8 and 9 September, Defries
ambitions would inflate from securing a single
record contract to launching an entertainment
empire.
Yet if Defries was the salesman, it was David
who masterminded the product. He was a stranger
in a strange land, where the main participants were
constantly rushing around, calling their friends on
the phone, hanging out at Maxs Kansas City and
trying to out-cool each other, but he was equally in

his element, enthralling the New Yorkers just as he

had the Pork actors. By now, his talent for
identifying people who could help him was as
finely honed as his songwriting skills.
Over those two days, the entire structure of what
would become MainMan was established. Zanetta
was already being drawn in he represented New
York cool to David, while to Defries he was both
inspiration and sounding board. He would soon be
given the title of MainMain President, USA (his
first job would be finding and painting an office)
and become the dominant figure in the organisation
after Defries, with many of his instincts and offthe-cuff remarks becoming company policy.
It was Zanetta who introduced David to Andy
Warhol, an event usually described as iconic.
The reality was more messy and inconclusive.
David was tense, attempting to impress Warhol
with a little mime, based on Kemps Pierrot
schtick where he pulled out his own intestines; the
little performance went down like a lead balloon,
with Warhol remaining on the edge of the
conversation. Instead David talked mainly with

Alan Midgette and Glenn OBrien, later editor of

Interview. Warhols only fully formed line of
conversation was that he liked Davids shoes. The
meeting was filmed: but apart from the cheesy feel
of Davids routine, the footage is notable for
another reason: between Andy himself, Zanetta,
who played Andy in Pork, Midgette, whod
famously impersonated Andy on a college tour, and
David, who memorably played Andy in the 1996
film Basquiat, the footage features four Warhols.
Which is, of course, a very Warholian happening.
Having secured his meeting with Warhol, David
enlisted Lisa Robinson as a co-conspirator to link
up with Andys musical protg. Once hed
learned Lisa was friends with Lou Reed, David
was absolutely intrigued, says Robinson, who
arranged for them to meet over dinner at the Ginger
Man, a really straight restaurant by Lincoln Park
where Lisa would go out for steaks with her friend
Fran Lebowitz. Lou and David chatted: Lou was
drunk and manic, David whispered flirtatiously,
while Lous wife Betty looked on adoringly.
Enthralled as Lisa was by David, she didnt

quite realise the scope of his ambition. Lou

explained he was about to record his debut RCA
album with Richard Robinson, who had recently
produced the Flamin Groovies superb Teenage
Head. Lous chat with David was friendly enough,
an upand-coming artist paying tribute to one whose
career had apparently tanked, but there was no
mention that David was thinking of working with
Lou; his furtiveness would soon cause a bit of a
falling out, says Lisa.
Later that evening Davids party, plus Richard
and Lisa, moved on to Maxs Kansas City. This
was both viper pit and arcadia, a place where,
says Leee Childers, Each night was different and
each night was proclaimed the last good night of
Maxs for years and of course it only got better
and better. The back room had seen endless
cultural and sexual unions, many of which seemed
hugely significant in later years, none of which
seemed so at the time. No one, including Andy
Warhol, thought that any of this was important,
much less that anyone was going to remember it,
says Childers. Everything was of itself the minute

it was happening and then it was over and thats

how the whole back room was. Thats how I
remember it in flashes.
Although most of those involved could not
appreciate the wider significance of the scenes
played out in the back room at Maxs, one
unabashed fan from Beckenham could. For the
fragile, thrift-store decadence and glamour of
Maxs would become the raw material of David
Bowies art. Just like the English bluesmen of the
sixties, Bowie would be accused of exploiting his
influences; without doubt, they did indeed bring
him money and fame. Yet his encounter that night
with a down-on-his-luck heroin addict who would
one day become his closest friend his twin
atom reveals him more as a fan than exploiter.
In the seven months since David discovered the
colourful story of Iggy Stooge, the Detroit singers
life had taken successively more picaresque turns.
Abandoned by his record company, he had suffered
heroin overdoses, van smashes, being stranded in
the Detroit projects clad in a tutu, and had recently
been booted out of guitarist Rick Derringers house

following the apparent theft of Liz Derringers

jewellery by Iggys underage girlfriend. After
hearing snippets of Iggys recent history from Lisa
Robinson, David asked if they could meet. Lisa
made more phone calls, and eventually Iggy was
persuaded to pull himself away from the TV in his
friend Danny Fields apartment, and walk up to
Maxs.
In future years, David would be seen as cold
and manipulative, eyeing Iggy much as a Victorian
collector would a choice hummingbird destined for
stuffing. The reality was almost the opposite, for it
was Iggy who manipulated the event, almost
dancing into the meeting, Zanetta noticed. Bowie
and Defries were both enthralled by the cheeky
raconteur. Iggy could turn on the flutter-eyelashed
flirtatiousness and build rapport just like David,
but there was an ide fixe about his manner that
fascinated, and slightly unnerved, David.
Their discussions about music, and Iggys future,
continued the next morning, over breakfast at the
Warwick, which in Defries distinctive style could
take hours, interrupted by endless phone calls and

scheming. Iggy was impressed by Defries his

big vision of what he was going to do and he
liked David. He could see beyond the charm, and
judged him very canny, very self-possessed and a
not unkind person. Which you dont usually see
in people so self-aware. David played him Hunky
Dory, while Iggy made polite noises. It wasnt
anything to do with what I was trying to do, but I
realised, in terms of song-craft, he can do A, B and
C. By the end of the meeting, Iggy had agreed to
come over to London, once hed completed his
methadone programme, and sign to Gem.
Bowie and Defries had set out to close a
recording deal and returned with an empire.
Within three days in New York, Defries had signed
Davids contract with RCA, discussed the rerelease of Davids old Mercury albums, recruited
Zanetta to the cause, formed a relationship with
Lou Reed and had recruited Iggy to the Gem fold,
promising to secure him a new record deal a
promise Defries fulfilled a few weeks later,
signing Iggy to Columbia.
By the time David, Mick and Angie who had

spent most of the trip visiting her parents in

Connecticut returned to London, David had
become obsessed with the singer he had met at
Maxs. He talked about Iggy for a full week it
was definitely all-consuming, says Bob Grace, a
recollection shared by Ken Scott and Trevor
Bolder. Iggy and Lou, it was, says Bolder,
always Iggy and Lou.
David was purposeful, clear-headed, in the days
following the New York trip, but wired, too, filled
with nervous energy as he prepared to unveil his
new songs and his new band. The unofficial debut
of what would become The Spiders from Mars
was planned for Friars Aylesbury, an assembly
hall in an ancient market town an hour out of
London, known for its enthusiastic audiences. In
the middle of September, Ronson called Bolder
and Woodmansey back from Hull for their first
show as a band. Rick Wakeman, Davids first
choice as pianist, had joined Yes just a few weeks
before, so David phoned an old friend from Kent,
Tom Parker, to play piano, jabbering in nervous

gratitude when Parker said, Of course!

When David took to the Friars stage on 25
September he was shaking: he had dressed up in
baggy black culottes, red platform boots and a
womens beige jacket, worn over his skinny, naked
chest. Does anyone have a heater? was one of his
asides, in a set of rambling song introductions that
took in Lou Reeds sense of humour and why New
Yorkers felt compelled to stare into subway
tunnels. We didnt know if he was on drugs, or
just nervous, says Kris Needs, a Bowie fan whod
designed the flyers for the night. The set was a
primitive version of what would become a wellhoned set, starting out with acoustic songs,
including Brels Port of Amsterdam, with the
band only joining in halfway through. But as
Ronson cranked up his Les Paul and the energy
levels increased, Davids announcements grew
shorter and the applause in the half-empty club
grew in intensity. After closing the set with a
ruthless version of Waiting for the Man, Bowie
walked into the dressing room, exultant. That was
great, he announced to Needs. And when I come

back Im going to be completely different.

Few people, outside Davids immediate circle,
realised how soon hed come back, or how
different hed be. But within the tiny coterie of
people David, Angie and the band, Defries and a
small crew of roadies the activity was feverish,
with David and musicians spending most of
October crammed in Greenwichs Underhill studio
the polystyrene-lined basement of a down-at-heel
Georgian building that also contained a car parts
showroom and an escort agency. Hunky Dory was
not yet released, and David was burning to record
its successor. Already, he had eight or nine songs
that theyd run through each day, playing each tune
just a few times before moving on to the next, to
keep the feel loose, un-studied. It felt democratic,
a band thing, says Bolder.
Several key songs they rehearsed notably
Moonage Daydream and Lady Stardust dated
from Davids last bout of songwriting in the spring,
yet most of them had been assembled with
astonishing speed within the previous few weeks.
In the wake of Hunky Dorys writing blitz, this

was impressive. Yet that was, literally, only half

the story. Bowies on-stage chatter at Aylesbury
showed him struggling to articulate his obsessions
with Americana, figureheads like Dylan, Reed and
Warhol, and the presumptuousness of the
songwriter. Bowies invention of Ziggy Stardust,
a concept that would encompass all these diverse
obsessions was simple, like all great ideas.
In later years, David Bowie would claim the
idea of Ziggy Stardust came to him in a dream
gifted by the same god who had told his father to
find a job at a childrens charity. If so, like Oh!
You Pretty Things, it was an unconscious
embodiment of all the skills that hed mastered in
the last few years.
David had experimented with a rock opera
back in 1968, when hed worked on a sequence
entitled Ernie Johnson at Ken Pitts apartment a
bizarre, camp, cockney epic which culminated in
the titular heros suicide. In comparison, Ziggy
Stardust wasnt really an opera, more a collection
of snapshots thrown together, edited later into a
sequence that made sense. The notion that Ziggy

would be Davids own alter-ego emerged only at

the last minute; it was a bodge-job, later refined
into a concept.
Ziggy was Davids homage to the outsider; the
main inspiration was undoubtedly Iggy, the singer
with whom David was obsessed and whose
doomed, Dionysian career path had already built
its own mythology. David was well aware, though,
that Iggy, too, was a mere creation. During their
first meeting David had that learned the scary,
gold-and glitter-spattered front man hid another
persona: the urbane Jim Osterberg, who was
disconcertingly reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart.
Vince Taylor, the other inspiration, was an
American rocker, who was actually born Brian
Holden in Isleworth, and had made it big in
France. By 1966, he was washed up, and the
teenage David had bumped into him during the
period when Vince was hanging around La
Giaconda, claiming he was the messiah and
pointing out UFO sites on a crumpled map. Hence
Ziggy was a tribute to artifice, a play on identity,
alter-ego placed on alter-ego, a vehicle for rock

n roll which would allow David, if everything

failed, to announce that this was all ironic, just a
pose.
Ziggys surname, a reference to the Legendary
Stardust Cowboy, was just as nuanced. The name
encompassed Davids enchantment with glamour
and glitter, referenced Hoagy Carmichaels bestknown song and even the relatively recent
realisation that, as Carl Sagan put it, we are all
stardust, all of our atoms recycled via
supernovae. And what was Ziggy Stardust, but old
vital rock n roll matter, recycled, but fresh as a
new world?
Ziggy wasnt born fully fledged, though. He
developed bit by bit. It was never discussed as a
concept album from the start, says Ken Scott. We
were recording a bunch of songs some of them
happened to fit together, some didnt work. Once
sessions started at Trident on 8 November, the
work in progress sounded more like fifties rock n
roll than The Stooges. A cover of Chuck Berrys
Around and Around featured in the early track
listing, and songs like Hang onto Yourself

featured quotes from Eddie Cochran and Chuck

Berry, as well as shades of Gene Vincent and
Vince Taylor. Davids obsession with rehearsing
and recording songs rapidly helped approximate
the roughness of the Velvets or The Stooges, yet
Ronson and his musicians David, too were too
competent to summon up anything like The
Stooges moronic inferno.
The straight-ahead rockers Hang onto
Yourself and Suffragette City took Eddie
Cochrans teenage rebellion as a model, with the
same mix of acoustic and electric guitars, as well
as liberal musical quotes from Something Else.
But where Cochrans songs spoke to kids breaking
the parental bonds, Ziggy Stardusts message was
explicitly about sexual liberation: Henry I
cant take you this time and The church of man,
love. Images like tigers on Vaseline or the
mellow-thighed chick put my spine out of place,
made up their own manifesto: theatrical, yet sleazy,
all delivered with an arched eyebrow.
The two songs that would open and close the
album were even less reminiscent of American

heavy rock. Both songs were in a slow-burning,

triple-time signature, 6/8 like House of the
Rising Sun or Paul Simons America yet are
starker, more stripped down. Five Years and
Rock n Roll Suicide are masterful, both built
on minimal, almost unvarying broken chords, with
Davids voice alone supplying the drama. Both
songs illustrate how Ziggy could stage an
emotional onslaught that David had never
attempted the desperation in Five Years, the
urgency in Rock n Roll Suicide, which
completed Ziggys dramatic arc. The ending,
Gimme your hands youre not alone, is pure
show-business artifice, an act of audience
manipulation worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, but
Bowies sympathy for Iggy, Vince and all the other
doomed rock n rollers is absolutely sincere.

Some figures, notably Angie Bowie, dispute that

David Bowie ever truly loved anyone; yet there is
no doubt of his deep and enduring love for rock n
roll. Rock n Roll Suicide is all the more
poignant given that, just a couple of years later,
Iggy Pop, abandoned by Bowie, would stab
himself on-stage, in an event publicised as a rock
n roll suicide that, his manager informed the
press, will only happen once.
Rock n Roll Suicide, along with Suffragette
City, was among the last songs recorded in the
albums main sessions, demonstrating that the
albums central concept Ziggys rise and fall
arrived late in the day, with Chuck Berrys
Around and Around still on the track listing. But
in that whirlwind winter, events were moving fast.
Hunky Dory was released on 17 December, with
the single Changes following it on 7 January and
immediately picking up radio play. A gorgeous
song, based around one of the piano runs
painstakingly worked out at Haddon Hall, with a
stammered chorus that echoed My Generation
and hence emphasised its status as an anthem for a

new youth movement, Changes didnt make the

British charts this time around but it was the
breakthrough, says Anya Wilson, who had to
hawk it around the radio.
It was in the closing weeks of 1971, as the final
details of Ziggys mythical career were penciled
in, that the hero was given his own costume. The
aesthetic was half futuristic, half thrift-shop chic,
masterminded primarily by Freddie Buretti.
Freddie himself cut an exotic figure with his
high-waisted peg-leg trousers, skinny shirts and,
occasionally, eighties-style oversize shades but
when he and David cooked up their new look, they
based the designs on the Droogs, the futuristic
teenage thugs in Stanley Kubricks legendary,
banned film version of A Clockwork Orange. But
to lessen the image of violence, I decided we
should go for extremely colourful and exotic
material in place of the Droog white cotton, says
David. Freddie designed and did most of the
sewing on the skinny outfits, which were fitted
with a generous, Tudor-style codpiece, copied
from Britains popular Mod jeans, Lee Cooper. To

complete the look, David searched out cheap,

brightly coloured wrestling boots, custom-made by
Russell & Bromley, whose showroom was based
in North Bromley. These kind of boots could be
seen on television every Saturday afternoon on
ITVs hugely popular, ludicrously choreographed
wrestling shows, and completed the aesthetic of
rock n roll danger and Vaudeville camp.
It was Angie who encouraged the next phase of
Davids makeover; within a few days, the flowing
gold locks that David had worn throughout the
recording were shorn. Thus, the final link with the
1960s was severed. Many of Davids
contemporaries Marc Bolan, and even the Nices
Keith Emerson, who wore a silver lurex jumpsuit
as he attacked his Hammond organ with a knife that
October had already glammed themselves up that
year. But their outfits, with flared trousers and
wavy hair, were in essence an evolution of the
hippie look. The Ziggy persona with its cropped
hair and skinny silhouette marked a ruthless
break with the sixties. It was finely calculated, but
impromptu; done in a rush. Freddie had hardly

finished sewing Davids first sand-and-black

quilted jumpsuit when David called Mark Pritchett
late one night. Can I borrow your Les Paul? The
red one?
It was raining the next day when David came to
collect it, mentioning he was off to a photoshoot
with Brian Ward, the Chrysalis photographer
whod first worked with David the previous
spring. In comparison, this was a simple shoot, in
black and white; David posing with Pritchetts
guitar directly outside Wards studio on Heddon
Street, the tiny U-shaped passage leading off
Regent Street, and then in the nearby telephone
box. The ghostly post-apocalyptic Droogs feel was
enhanced by the cardboard boxes left out on the
street, the glare of the street lights and the early
evening chill evident in the car windscreens, in
what would be Londons coldest January for
several years.
Although a BBC session on 11 January was
booked to promote his current album, Queen
Bitch was the only Hunky Dory song its campy
New York vibe especially reminiscent of the

Velvets Sweet Jane in the session, which was

dominated by Hang onto Yourself and the newly
written manifesto Ziggy Stardust. This was a
bold, risky strategy, considering Davids everchanging musical identity, but Defries and Anya
Wilson were happy to follow Davids instincts.
He was our golden boy, says Wilson. People
knew it was going to happen.
Over that intense winter, David spent even more
time thinking than he did singing. Earnest
conversations at Haddon Hall ranged late into the
night: freewheeling, philosophical, touching on
Chuck Berry, The Velvet Underground, the postindustrial future and Hollywood glamour. Often
David would talk to Anya Wilson and her
boyfriend, Dai Davies, about the pretty things.
They knew he didnt mean his old friends from the
blues scene. These are the coming generation, he
told them, a change is on its way.
As David developed his theme, they huddled
round the huge corner fireplace, the air thick with
the haze from his cigarettes, and listened to him

develop a manifesto line by line: this was a new

era, factory jobs were obsolete, and so were the
Victorian values that defined their parents lives.
The coming generation would not be restricted by
work or conventional sexuality. This bisexual,
glittering generation was the homo superior and
David would be their spokesperson.
As a spokesperson, David needed someone to
spread his message. The old, sixties writers,
people whod written about David already, were
out. Then Dai Davies, newly recruited as Davids
press mastermind, told David about the new
generation of journalists, writers who were
interested in theories, in manifestos, not in a pint
and a chat in the pub. Together, they would
approach Michael Watts first; hed read Norman
Mailer, and was developing a new, long-form
feature style at Melody Maker. Next, theyd take
Davids new manifesto to Charles Shaar Murray at
the NME.
In later months, Davies wondered about the
manifesto. There were gaps in it, bits that didnt
make sense, and he wondered if David knew that

and decided it didnt matter. Later still he realised

what David had been doing. Hed read about
Elvis, and hed read about Hollywood in the
thirties and forties, And he was building a brand
before that language had even been invented.
Watts met Bowie upstairs in Gems Regent
Street office. The Melody Maker staff were well
aware of Bowies regular presence at the
Sombrero; there was a sense that David had
something to get off his chest, and a hope that
Watts would get a scoop, which is exactly what
happened.
Watts remembers Bowie being slightly
flirtatious all the way through the interview; and
indeed there was a delicious coyness about the
whole piece, with Watts feigning a worldly,
unshocked demeanour, as David holds forth, selfconsciously messianic. Im going to be huge, he
tells Watts, and its quite frightening in a way. In
his words, one can sense the teenage brio that so
entranced the Deram staff, but here its augmented
with a consummate display of name-dropping
(Lindsay Kemp, Lou, Iggy and the Tibet Society)

and a new playfulness, a sense that he is playing a

game and is a master of it. When he tells Watts,
Im gay and always have been, even when I was
David Jones, Watts comments that there is a sly
jollity about how he says it. It was obvious that
Watts was transfixed by what Bowies next
interviewer, Charles Shaar Murray, describes as
a genius for inducing a powerful, platonic mancrush in fundamentally straight guys.
For all the playfulness, this was a momentous
announcement; utterly without precedent, and
ravishingly brave. Gay sex had been nominally
decriminalised in July 1967, but arrests for Gross
Indecency had tripled over the following three
years, while many of Davids contemporaries
would remain firmly in the closet for decades to
come. Gem staff attempting to get Bowie airplay at
the BBC had already encountered the objection that
we dont have perverts on this show. There was
a precedent for Davids announcement, of which
he was almost certainly aware, namely David
Hockneys overt declaration of his own sexuality
with his We Two Boys Together Clinging painting,

back in 1961, when gay sex could land a man in

prison. Bowies move was more flagrant, aimed at
the mass-market, rather than a coterie of critics. It
was a thrillingly high-risk strategy and one that
David had only discussed with Dai Davies, not
Defries, who anyway took the view that any
publicity is good publicity.
Davids sexual and image makeover had already
been anticipated by Marc Bolan whod glammed
up in the spring of 1971 and proclaimed, Ill go
up and kiss guys if I think theyre nice, in Sounds.
But Marc lacked Davids chutzpah, his willingness
to gamble everything, and David, of course, was in
second place and needed to outdo him.
In later years, gay-rights activists would
criticise Bowies coming out as mere androgyny
as chic. Some of their cynicism was probably
justified, given that after David outed himself, he
inned himself a few years later, complaining about
the commercial damage that his image had caused
him in America. Rarely has such a spontaneous act
of courage been followed by such a considered act
of cowardice. Yet Davids later retraction is

irrelevant: he had let a genie out of the bottle and it

would never fit back in. This was a generational
shift. Steve Strange, later of the Blitz club, was
twelve when Bowie made his announcement, and
for him and his peers, Bowie demonstrated he was
not alone. I grew up in Newbridge, in Wales
and as a kid I was the freak of the village. I didnt
know what being gay meant, there was no sex
education, but I knew it wasnt right. Bowies
appearance was a beacon that would eventually
draw a generation of kids to London or to a new
life.
David was careful to have his cake and eat it in
the interview pointing out his good relationship
with Angie and Zowie, leaving the implication that
his gay side was as camped up as the 50,000
sales of The Man Who Sold the World in the US.
This is the interpretation David would push in the
1990s, claiming that the excitement of hanging out
in the Sombrero outweighed anything physical,
which was something I wasnt comfortable with at
all. This pained recollection seems to confirm the
criticisms of those who regard his gay phase as a

pose, a marketing stance. Yet for David, the

marketing, the pose, was part of his essence.
Witnesses like Tony Zanetta and Leee Childers
were integral members of the organisation that
painted David as a poster boy for bisexuality; but
the pair, put on the spot, conclude that Davids gay
stance was primarily about culture, rather than sex.
He was bisexual, but what he really was, was a
narcissist boys or girls, it was all the same, says
Zanetta. He was attracted to the gay subculture
because he loved its flamboyance. Sometimes it
was just an expression of communication
sometimes it was a way of assimilating
someone. But it was never his primary thing, and
once the girls came flocking it didnt matter.
Michael Watts, who once commented sometimes,
honesty pays about the revelation he extracted,
today says simply, He knew exactly what he was
doing.
Within a few days of the Melody Maker
interview, David had to contend with a much more
sceptical audience; his three musicians from Hull.
He had primed Mick, Woody and Trevor by taking

them to see A Clockwork Orange and explaining

that the costumes being designed by Freddie
Buretti were futuristic, rather than something
poofs would wear. When the three were
presented with their catsuits blue for Trevor,
gold for Woody and pink for Ronson ready for
the debut of their new set, David was faced with
one of the trickiest acts of salesmanship of his
career. Bolder frankly admits he was not
impressed To be honest, it took a lot to wear
that stuff and remembers Mick, destined for the
pink jacket, as the most vociferous objector. Mick
was not up for it. Not at all. Worn down by
Bowies pure persistence, We just sort of went
along with it in the end.
It was possibly the wardrobe disputes that meant
that when it came time to premiere the bands
makeover on 29 January, 1972, the backstage area
at Friars Aylesbury, now Davids favourite warmup venue, was closed off. The crowd was double
the size of Septembers show, kids from London
among them, Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger
Taylor had taken the train up for the show, and as

Walter Carlos Ode to Joy, from A Clockwork

Orange, struck up, a ripple of excitement passed
through the mostly teenage audience. Then there
was the climax, with the strobe and he was
standing there in this blue-grey check jumpsuit and
it was, Blimey! Unlike anything Id ever seen,
says Kris Needs.
The band unleashed their full Ziggy assault,
launching into Hang onto Yourself, and then
Ziggy Stardust a sonic slap in the face for the
kids who expected to see and hear the David
Bowie of Hunky Dory. Some of those already
familiar anthems Life On Mars?, Oh! You
Pretty Things followed, complete with a long
version of I Feel Free, Bowie disappearing to
change his catsuit as Ronson let rip on his Les
Paul. By the time they hit Rock n Roll Suicide
the place was in total uproar, says Needs.
Dizzied by the experience, Kris made his way to
the dressing room after the show. David was
exultant. Told you Id be different, he told him,
before planting a kiss firmly on the seventeen-yearold fans lips. It was life-changing stuff, says

Needs of that evening. That night invented the

seventies, and everything that came after, glam or
punk that was the defining moment. The local
newspapers review of the show was titled A Star
is Born.
The sense of manifest destiny and utter
confidence Im going to be huge its quite
frightening in a way that was surging through
David would permeate their whole tiny operation
over the next few weeks. Over the winter Tony
Defries had taken to wearing an enormous fur coat,
invariably accompanied by a huge cigar; together
with his prodigious nose and halo of frizzy hair he
cut the weirdest figure according to RCAs Barry
Bethel, who remembers that the entire record
company was in awe of this intimidating figure.
Defries loved gathering young people around him,
enthusiastic
teenagers,
unconstrained
by
convention, who enjoyed his mockery of record
companies. Defries was a good listener, though,
and took note of RCAs concerns when they heard
the initial album acetates. RCA told us Ziggy
Stardust was great but we needed a single, says

Robin Mayhew, something they could pull straight

off the album so David went off and wrote what
he called Somewhere Over the Rainbow. His
Starman song.
It was at that point that the [Ziggy] concept
finally happened, says Ken Scott, it was the
perfect single.
In stories of the songwriting of Paul McCartney
and John Lennon, the rivals with whom David
would soon be compared, I Wanna Hold Your
Hand has been singled out as an early peak, a
knowing song that packs in so many arresting
songwriting devices a joyous energy and
invention, as writer Ian MacDonald puts it that
its hit status was inevitable. Starman represents
the same euphoric peak in Bowies writing, a
moment of technical supremacy.
The opening minor chords are cheekily selfreferential, a quote from Davids one hit, Space
Oddity; then the story is mapped out like a novel,
with supreme economy. Didnt know what time it
was, the narrator tells us, to a claustrophobically
tight tune. The lyrics are set against the beat,

adding to the intrigue, with the last word in each

line low-oh-oh drawn out, pulling the listener
in syllable by syllable, like a fish on a line. Then
the key changes from minor to major, Ronsons
staccato guitar fires up like a searchlight in the
gloom and we hit the chorus and as David leaps
an octave, over the word starman, we hit escape
velocity, and take off.
As modern as it feels, though, the song is
classic, and if it feels like the music has gone from
monotone to Technicolor, thats because the
starman waiting in the sky so closely matches Judy
Garlands evocation of somewhere over the
rainbow note for note. It draws on the same
emotion a yearning for escape, from the
depression and monochrome of 1939 or 1972
and the listeners response is instinctive, drawn in
by the familiar, intrigued by the alien.
Starman was completed in the last session at
Trident on 4 February, and in the following weeks
the band grew to share Davids belief that there
was never a doubt that this wasnt going to work,
says Bolder. Everything was in place.

In typical Defries grandstanding, the manager

was building up his own management empire
before David had even hit the charts; Dana
Gillespie was already on the Gem payroll, and
Iggy now named Iggy Pop joined her March
1972. Although signed as a solo artist Defries
was only interested in stars and considered
musicians as mere drains on his income Iggy
smuggled in guitarist James Williamson, and then
the remaining Stooges, who holed up in
Kensington, picking up girls, locating drugs
suppliers and ignoring Bowies suggestions that he
produce their album. With Defries artists
descending on London, showing up at parties or T.
Rex shows and Iggys legend already being
celebrated in papers including Melody Maker, the
sense that 1972 would be Davids, and Defries,
year was inescapable.
As David and the band prepared for a string of live
shows running up to the Ziggy albums release
date, each of them was convinced that Everything
seemed right, says Bolder. That was the weird

thing, we didnt even have to think about it. Then

Woody painted the front of his Ludwig kit with the
words Spiders and they were a band.
The short tour opened at a tiny pub named the
Toby Jug in Tolworth, Surrey. The stage was just a
foot high, and the roadies had crammed a full PA
and lighting rig into the room; the audience,
numbering fifty or sixty were as transfixed as those
at Aylesbury, and in the fourteen shows that
followed, David recruited hard-core fans in their
dozens, not in their hundreds but each of them,
like audience member Pete Abbott, who witnessed
the show at Imperial College, remember, It was
like nothing Id ever seen before. We knew about
Bolan, but that was pop music. This was serious.
At Imperial College David attempted to emulate
the feat hed seen Iggy perform, in a short snippet
of footage at Cincinnati, of walking into the
audience and being held up; he toppled to the floor,
one of several tumbles he took in those weeks. He
would never let the audience know [it had
happened], says Bolder. He would just get back
up and carry on. The band roved up and down the

country, David, Angie and band in two used Jags,

with the crammed one-ton van bringing up the rear.
In show after show, David was putting his moves
together, expansive gestures that, when he finally
played big halls, would reach the back of them.
He was a really good front man. He knew exactly
what he was doing.
By the time David arrived at Manchesters Free
Trade Hall on 21 April, and attempted to crowd
surf once more, the audience held him up. Angies
input was vital she drove the whole thing, made
it happen, says Robin Mayhew; she operated the
lights on the first shows, organising the costumes,
the food. But on stage it was Mick Ronson who
was king; there was no clue that this was the man
whod pored nervously over studio arrangements,
for he was in total control. If the thing was getting
shaky, he would hold it together, says Mayhew. If
Bowie noticed something, say the finish of Ziggy
Stardust was dragging, it was Ronno would stay
and direct things. No shouting or screaming, no
egos.
When The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust was

released on 6 June, plenty of reviewers were

irritated by the audacity of the concept. Melody
Maker described Bowie as a superb parodist;
Sounds, which had applauded Hunky Dory,
declared, It would be a pity if this album was the
one to make it much of it sounds the work of a
competent plagiarist. Their words illustrated the
irrelevance of the music critic, for over the next
three or four weeks it became obvious an
unstoppable juggernaut was on the move. Early in
the month there was the announcement that
MainMan would be presenting both Iggy Pop and
Lou Reed in concert recruiting two of Americas
hippest acts as supporting attractions in the Bowie
circus while just one week after its negative
album review Sounds decided the Bowie live
show just needs to be packed with sweating
teenagers to pull it off. Over just a few short
weeks, a consensus was emerging; if Ziggy was
merely a joke, everybody wanted to be in on it.
There was one wobble, after the Oxford Town
Hall show on 17 June. This was an amazing
performance, where Mick Rock the brilliant

photographer whod joined the MainMan

cavalcade at the Birmingham show on 17 March
captured David knelt in front of Mick, his arms
grasping Micks thighs as he bites at Ronsons
guitar strings with Ronson and the audience
transfixed with laughter; instant glam pornography,
the guitar fellatio shot would be printed as a fullpage ad, purchased by Defries, in the next weeks
Melody Maker. There was a flurry of concern
from Ronson not a fear of the reaction of
homophobic gangs in Hull, as has been speculated,
but because the musicians, Mick and his muso
mates, thought bands like Sweet were unbearably
naff, manufactured. He was caught in a divide,
says Dai Davies, who spent hours reassuring the
guitarist that the music would be taken seriously,
despite such gimmickry. Bowie would later
explain that he and Marc Bolan were high glam:
conceptual. Brickies in satin, like Sweet, were low
glam.
As the band toured through the spring, there was
the sense both of a groundswell of support, driven
through word of mouth, and a potential backlash

from critics, who found Bowie and Defries

operation considered and manipulative. The
perfect response to such cynicism came with the
song that would seal the deal between David and
his fans, the ultimate example of the spontaneity
that co-existed with his meticulous planning.
Late in March, David had discovered that Mott
The Hoople one of his favourite bands, whom he
imagined as a heavy biker gang, says singer Ian
Hunter were splitting, and after begging them to
reconsider, he invited them down to Gems Regent
Street office, and played them a song which hed
just finished with them in mind. He just played it
on an acoustic guitar, says Hunter. I knew straight
away it was a hit. There were chills going down
my spine. Its only happened to me a few times in
my life: when you know that this is a biggie. We
grabbed hold of it. Im a peculiar singer but I knew
I could handle that. All the Young Dudes
reimagined Mott, in reality well-behaved Hereford
boys, as heavy-duty punks, Clockwork Orange
Droogs. Against a stately, descending chord
sequence, the lyrics name check juvenile

delinquency, acne, cockney rhyming slang, TV and

suicide at twenty-five; All the Young Dudes was
a glorious celebration of youth, in all its glamour,
ephemerality and heroism. It would be as sincere a
love song as Bowie would ever write, to his most
enduring love: rock n roll.
Now, having written the definitive anthem of the
seventies, David simply gave it away. Some
thought that this was a self-serving act, designed to
underline his own musical omnipotence. Bob
Grace, the man whod overseen most of Bowies
recent songs, is emphatic that in giving away the
song, Bowie paid a price. I thought that was a
mistake. If David had put out All the Young
Dudes himself that autumn, he would have been
huge beyond our comprehension. It was great he
gave [Mott] the song, but Im convinced it cost
him. Both arguments ignore the fact that Bowie
remained, at heart, a fan. This was a simple act of
spontaneity, helped by the fact that the music was
in any case simply pouring out of him.
Mott The Hoople recorded Dudes on 14 May
at Olympic in Barnes, with David producing. Mott,

too, had now joined the MainMan empire, and it

seemed likely they would provide its first hit, for
Davids own Starman had now hung around for a
fortnight, without troub ling the charts. But show by
show, in little towns like Torbay or Weston Super
Mare, David and The Spiders won over their
audiences: a dozen here, a hundred there, before
the single made a modest entry into the UK singles
chart on 24 June, at number forty-nine. The
following day, Dai Davies announced, with only
marginal exaggeration, that 1000 fans were turned
away from The Spiders show at The Croydon
Greyhound, where Roxy Music were the support
act. But Starman still languished at number fortyone when David and the Spiders walked into the
Top of the Pops studio on 5 July.
The song had actually made its TV debut on
celebrated kids teatime show Lift Off with Ayshea
on 15 June Bowie and his Spiders followed an
owl puppet named Ollie Beak but it was the Top
of the Pops performance, broadcast on 6 July, that
transfixed the nations youth, and horrified their
parents. Bowie was clear-eyed and joyous, his

come-to-bed eyes inviting both girls and boys. As

Ronson approaches the microphone for the chorus,
the sight of David casually draping his arm
around the platinum-haired guitarist Ronson had a
visceral impact. This was the Melody Maker
cover made flesh.
Marc Bolan name-checked in the line the DJ
was playing some getit-on rock n roll had
camped it up on Top of the Pops first, but he was
cute, unthreatening; David and The Spiders were
dangerous, a warning not only to lock up your
daughters, but your sons, too. The moment David
put his arm round Mick Ronson, teenagers around
the country shared a moment of epiphany, as
ballets enfant terrible, Michael Clarke, puts it. It
was like Oh my God, maybe other people are a
little bit like I feel inside. In just three minutes,
David Bowie laid out his claim as a glam messiah,
and propelled his single to number ten, in what
would be a twelve-week run in the charts.
David had turned up late at the glitter rock ball
Marc Bolan had famously sprinkled glitter over his
face for his Hot Love appearance on Top of the

Pops, back in March 1971. Yet Bowies

intervention was definitive, it was unashamed,
committed, thought through in every detail;
besides, many contemporaries remembered that,
with The Hype, he had helped inspire Bolans
glitter look in the first place. With their longrunning mutual name-checks, Bolan and Bowie
were seen as joint creators of what was then
known as glitter rock, later renamed glam in fact,
theyd both glittered up at the same time, at the
hands of Chelita Secunda, fashion editor of Nova
magazine and a much-loved (and wayward) rock
n roll society hostess. She always had David,
Marc and Reg Elton John over at her place,
says Jeff Dexter. She wore glitter herself and one
day she put glitter on Marc. David was there and
said, I want some, and Reg had some, too. So the
birth of Glam Rock was definitely at Chelitas.
Just as Judy Garlands dreams of life beyond the
rainbow seduced a world gripped by the
Depression and threatened by war in Europe,
Davids own blend of space-age futurism and
glamour lodged in the consciousness of a

generation in sore need of escapism: glitter

sparkles best when set against a grey landscape. In
January 1973 a stock market crash finally killed off
the sixties boom; the collapse in share prices was
followed by an oil crisis and full-blown recession,
and the landscape became as grey as anyone could
remember since the austerity of Davids youth.
References to the 1920s Weimar republic, or
1930s Hollywood and Art Deco, and even the
threadbare glamour of Edwardian music hall all
images of partying amid the ruins pervaded
Davids music, as it did that of emerging rivals
like Roxy Musics Bryan Ferry; this was their
time. Their ruthless competition added to the
excitement, just as it had in thirties Hollywood. It
was, Ill do anything, play anything, say anything,
wear anything to become a star, says Davids
friend Scott Richardson. And theres nothing
wrong with that. And there was a tremendous
hunger on the part of the audience for that, too. It
was that moment in time.
Other people who passed within the Bowie
orbit underline that sense of mission. Cindy M was

a friend of Rodney Bingenheimer, who arranged

for her to meet David at Haddon Hall. She was
ushered into the most bizarre of environments for a
young girl from LA: gothic stained-glass windows,
grandiose staircases, Persian rugs, carved
elephants, shelves full of art books and a hi-fi
playing Roxy Music were some of the
kaleidoscope of impressions she retains from that
overwhelming afternoon, together with the
luminous stars she remembers painted on the
ceiling above David and Angies bed, where she
spent much of her time. Roxy Music are going to
be massive, too, he told her, but Cindy was
already in no doubt that she was in the presence of
a hero in the making. When Angie arrived later,
says Cindy, she got her face slapped.
Even as Starman ascended into the Top 40,
David was setting out a wider agenda, one that
marked him as the indisputable curator of all that
was hip. As if delivering a ready-made hit to Mott
The Hoople was not enough, as well as producing
their album completed in rushed snatches over

June and July Bowie and Defries had by now

appointed themselves as saviours of Lou Reeds
career too. On a New York trip back in March,
Defries had heard Lous solo album was a disaster
and arranged for David to produce its follow-up,
before announcing MainMan would present live
dates by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed in mid-July. The
two shows would form an appetizer for David and
The Spiders most crucial show to date, for which
Defries planned to jet over a plane-load of
American journalists, ready to preview Davids
forthcoming US tour.
The venue for the 15 July show was Friars
Aylesbury: the one place Defries could guarantee a
packed house. By now, Ziggy Stardust had hit
number five in the UK charts (Hunky Dory would
soon follow it, up to number three), and it was at
this show that all involved knew that David was no
longer on the brink of stardom: he had made it,
exactly as he and Defries had predicted. That
night, you knew this had become a movement, said
Dai Davies, when you looked into the audience
and could see a hundred Ziggies. Many of the US

journalists, including Lisa Robinson, Lilian Roxon,

Lenny Kaye and Creems Dave Marsh, knew
Ziggys primary influences first-hand. But even
Marsh, a veteran of high-energy shows by the MC5
and The Stooges, thought it a good show. The one
thing you would be afraid of, that the costumes
would outweigh the music, wasnt happening. This
was a real songwriter, with real songs and a real
band and Ronson was fabulous.
Marsh was not alone, though, in wondering if
there was something vampiric about Bowies
sponsorship of Iggy and Lou. At the next days
press conference at The Dorchester hotel, Marsh
walked in with his old Detroit buddy, and its as
if somebody has taken the floor and tilted it in
Iggys direction, as all the New York journalists
scurried over to see their old pal. Marsh saw
David watching the mle with eyes like darts.
But how was I to know? I was just a twenty-threeyear-old greeting a friend.
Recording on Lous album began at north
Londons Morgan Sound in August, proceeding at a
whirlwind pace, with three backing tracks

recorded in a single day. Like his recruitment of

Iggy, Bowies offer to produce what would
b e c o m e Transformer
was
outrageously
presumptuous; it was also a tougher task than
anyone could imagine, for Lou was a mess,
addicted to bickering and manipulation. Many
onlookers would credit arranger Mick Ronson
with doing the bulk of the work. Indeed, He was
the one on the shop floor sorting things out, says
bassist Herbie Flowers, and he worked closely
with David to map out the songs. David, however,
had the much more difficult task, soothing Lous
frazzled ego, talking him out of his moods and
coping with his mind games. Lou was extremely
messed up, like a parody of a drug fiend, says Dai
Davies, who sat in on the sessions. David was
incredible, like a much older, mature producer,
and would talk Lou down. Ken Scott, who was
engineering, points out, It was a team, David,
Mick, myself, everyone knew what to do. But
David just understood Lou. Which no one else did,
in the state he was in.
Davids calm in the studio seemed almost

supernatural compared to the frenzy around him,

which would soon come to a peak with two
elaborate shows at the Rainbow Theatre in north
London. He had planned a series of innovations:
choreography by Lindsay Kemp, a multi-level set
and Warhol-style projections. All of the tiny crew
were caught up in the manic preparations: screens
were improvised from paper and wood, silver
paint for the scaffolding bought cheap from a
friend, choreography worked out over a single
evening at Haddon Hall. Davids focus was
unrelenting; hed selected the venue, the look of the
lighting and staging, using techniques hed seen
employed in Cabaret and shows by the Living
Theatre and filed away in his mental Rolodex for
the right occasion. The look seamlessly
incorporated Warhol, Jean Genet and Jailhouse
Rock.
At the centre of it all, David also planned the
transformation of his own look, a further
distillation of the essence of Ziggy. In his search
for more outrageous clothes, hed already seen the
creations of Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto,

and finally managed to score one leotard red,

with cut-off legs and a ludicrous bunny design,
that was so outr it was languishing, unsold. The
leotard completed the classic later-period Ziggy
look, joining an innovation that was just as crucial
as Davids musical advances.
Along with Elviss DA and The Beatles moptops, Ziggys carrot-top makes up the founding
triumvirate of definitive rock n roll dos. This
creation had been sculpted earlier in July, and
according to David was inspired by a model with
a Yamamoto haircut It was [in] a slightly girly
magazine like Honey, not Vogue. Angie called in
Beckenham hair-dresser Suzi Fussey, whod long
looked after Peggys hair, to construct the
elaborate concoction razor-cut at sides and back,
backcombed into a puffy fluffball, like a tropical
birds mating crest, at the front and dye his locks
an unforgettable flame red. I designed the colour
and the haircut, but Angie had a lot to do with it
she was the one who gave David the courage to
attempt the most exotic things, says Fussey, who
joined the crew as Davids personal hairdresser

and assistant shortly before the Rainbow concert.

The transformation was electrifying; just a few
weeks before David had looked cute, gamine; now
he looked like an alien peacock. Yet at the centre
of the hubbub around his most ambitious shows to
date he remained focused, relaxed, directing
rehearsals with deftness and humour, taking time
out to show new pianist Matthew Fisher the
opening chords for Starman, delighted that
someone appreciated his songwriting. Behind the
alien facade, he remained reassuringly human.
Early in the preparations hed called Fishers
house and the pianists wife, Linda, had rushed to
answer the phone, and got the sweetest of tellingsoff: You shouldnt be rushing in your condition,
he admonished her. Whens the happy day? Linda
was shocked to realise hed remembered
Matthews chance remark of a few weeks back that
she was pregnant; soon they were discussing
breathing exercises and parenting tips. Few other
musicians of that sexist time would have done the
same it was a typical example of how his charm
was innate, not purely manipulative.

Those whod known David for years, though,

noticed a new distancing an exclusion zone
opening up around the Bowie persona. When
Lindsay Kemp had first met David, the teenager
had been convinced of his own talent, but he was
not starry, by God, no. By that August, just a few
months of genuine stardom, of seeing fans dressed
up in his own image had had a subtle effect. Kemp
observed that David fell for it. You know he
believed in his own iconism it made it difficult
to be close to him.
This subtle realignment, the sense that David felt
himself different, special, was uncomfortable. It
didnt seem the result of innate selfishness. More it
was a reaction to the sheer intensity, a hysteria
which would affect the most stable psyche. That
Rainbow show was a shock a big shock, says
Kemp. When I saw how he captured an audience
of thousands and knew exactly what to do. It was
absolutely electric I was numb from beginning to
end.
The two Rainbow shows were a triumph, the
high point of the Spiders era; there was the sense

that the ideas had been plucked out of the air,

without the formulaic overtones that afflicted some
later performances. The audience screamed
occasionally, but stayed politely in their seats; for
all the glitter, the attention to musical detail was
stunning. Fisher, the ex-Procol Harum keyboard
player, who had been asked to help out for the two
Rainbow shows, was placed behind a screen and
was therefore free to walk out into the audience
when he wasnt playing the piano. His singing
was simply incredible. Id never realised how his
voice is 100 per cent, spot in tune, and that if he
sings out of tune on his records, its because he
wants to. The two showcase events, with the
presence of two Bowie albums in the charts shortly
afterwards, sealed the deal for David. He was no
longer a novelty; now he was a phenomenon, just
eight weeks since that first sell-out show in
Croydon.
The sense of event was heightened two weeks
later, in Manchester. Throughout the tour, both
band and crew had stayed in tiny hotels and B&Bs;
that evening, for the first time, they were checked

into an up-market hotel, the Manchester Excelsior,

and told they could sign for whatever they wanted
on room service. After a night getting wasted on
the bands signature cocktail (the Spider Special,
made up of brandy, advocaat and lemonade) the
assembled MainMan staff were bleary and slightly
green-faced the next morning, when they were
greeted with a speech almost Churchillian in its
scope.
As far as RCA in America are concerned,
Tony Defries informed his audience, the young
man with red hair sitting at the end of this table is
the biggest thing to come out of England since The
Beatles. And if we get this right theres every
possibility we will be as big as The Beatles, if not
bigger. Were relying on all of you and you all
have to learn to look and act like a million
dollars!
Like all great generals, Defries was as
concerned with logistics as he was with morale,
and he briskly went around the table checking on
the status of instruments, amplifier backline and
PA. It turned out the band didnt own most of the

backline. What do you need for this, William?

Defries asked Roadie Will Palin. Er, 20,000?
Within a couple of days, all the gear had been
purchased, flight-cased, and was on its way across
the Atlantic for The Spiders biggest adventure so
far.

10
Battle Cries and Champagne
David was like a lost child, looking for
Angie. Im sure he was very vulnerable
and nervous. I didnt think about it at the
time what did I know?
Tony Zanetta

The 22 September, 1972 show in Cleveland that

launched Davids assault on America felt like a
thrilling, surreal, high-cholesterol version of his
early British dates. Local radio stations filled the
airwaves with Ziggy songs, encouraged by Brian
Sands, a friend of John Mendelssohns who had set
up a local Bowie fan club. There was a decent
scattering of Ziggy clones in the six-hundred-strong
audience, which gave the high-powered show a

riotous reception. As David and the band sat

drinking during the after-show party at Hollenden
House a huge, 1960s hotel with bleached-wood
interiors and space-age fibre-glass furniture the
room was fizzing with excitement.
Oh, dont worry, said Defries. Youre coming
back to Cleveland at the end of the tour, and well
be playing the big venue, with 10,000 people.
The band laughed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Tony,
they all chorused.
But we did come back, says Trevor Bolder.
Two nights, sold out.
For David, this was the rollercoaster ride of which
hed fantasised; the people, places and the spaces
in America would all make their mark on his
music. Through the following months, he would be
pushed through a schedule more gruelling than that
which had brought many tightly-knit bands to grief
and lap it up, devouring the experience. He was
just completely on it, the ultimate pro a machine,
says Scott Richardson, one of many who remember
Davids exuberance and excitement. Yet those

heady months would also splinter his relationship

with Angie and open up cracks in his own, once
sturdy psyche.
For Tony Defries, too, the challenge of
conquering America was at the core of all his
fantasies. Hed started with one artist, and now
had a stable of them. At the beginning of that year
he had measured himself against Colonel Parker;
now that ambition seemed too prosaic. By the end
of the year, he talked of his company as the new
Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer. His business was bigger
than rock n roll; he traded in stars.
In order to build this lofty edifice, Defries
needed a New York base, so during late 1972,
Tony Zanetta found a two-bedroom apartment on
the Upper East Side, bought furniture and painted it
himself. His theatre background meant he was
content with the occasional cash handout or gift in
lieu of a salary an important qualification for any
prospective MainMan employee. Zanetta was soon
joined by Leee Childers who would become
road manager and later advance guard, checking
out venues before the band arrived and Cyrinda

Foxe, a charming Marilyn Monroe lookalike

beloved of the Warhol crew. The trio were all
dreamers, with minimal business experience, but
Defries loved hanging out with them, absorbing
their enthusiasm. Within weeks, they realised
Cyrindas fort was not administration; instead
Kathy Dorritie Cherry Vanilla replaced
Cyrinda and proved to be the only one with any
idea of how to run an office. Zanetta was handed
day-to-day management of the forthcoming tour,
initially accompanied by the sage figure of Gustl
Breuer. An elegant fifty-seven-year-old opera
expert from the RCA classics department, he had
been delegated by the company to oversee
spending on the tour, which they had been
persuaded to underwrite by the silver-tongued
Defries. Gustl joined a cavalcade of exotic
characters which included hairdresser Suzi Fussey,
photographer Mick Rock, the roadies including
Peter Hunsley and Robin Mayhew Davids
friends George and Birgit Underwood, plus a team
of three bodyguards led by Stuey George, an old
Hull mate of Ronnos with a noticeable limp.

David arrived in New York on 17 September,

1972, with Angie in tow. Their week-long cruise
across the Atlantic on the QE2 was well
publicised, highlighting their status as eccentric
1930s-style glamour icons. Defries considered
Davids stated fear of flying an affectation,
inspired by one occasion when David wanted to
avoid flying with Angie to Cyprus to see her
parents. He naturally incorporated Davids
intermittent phobia into his palette of publicity
gimmicks, while David likewise became addicted
to the quirky, cosmopolitan charm of travelling by
boat and the temporary fear of flying became
permanent.
In their first couple of days in New York, Bowie
and Ronson set out to find a replacement for the
various temporary Brit pianists whod helped them
out so far. Annette Peacock a delightfully genrebusting artist who was briefly signed to MainMan
suggested her own pianist, Mike Garson, who
was scraping a living giving piano lessons. It was
Ronson who oversaw the auditions at RCA, sitting
in with Garson in the main studio and showing him

the chords to Changes. Mick had an amazing ear

for detail and fell in love with Garsons playing
after just seven or eight bars. David, too, was
overwhelmed he was simply extraordinary
and grew to love sitting alongside the bearded,
almost gentle musician on the tour bus, finding out
how he ticked. Garson brought a decadent, almost
Weimar ambience to the music, which perfectly
offset The Spiders no-nonsense R&B. He made
his debut at the Cleveland show, and would
quickly become integral to Davids music. He
would also become a key player in the ultimate
dismemberment of the band he augmented so
perfectly.
For David, being on the road was the fulfilment
of fantasies hed treasured ever since Terry had
turned him on to Jack Kerouac. He loved the long
drives along the American highways in their rented
bus, and as the band drove from Cleveland to
Memphis, and then back to New York, he spent
endless hours surveying the landscape and
buildings along the roadside, or chatting with
George Underwood and Birgit, Georges beautiful,

dark-haired Danish-born wife, whod come along

for the adventure.
George was as obsessive a Yankophile as
David, overjoyed to be in the land of Elvis Presley
and Muddy Waters. It was during the drive from
Cleveland to New York that he was messing
around on an acoustic and started to strum out the
distinctive stop-start riff of Muddys Im a Man.
David started strumming along with him. And then
he wrote the song, says Trevor Bolder.
Other passengers claimed to have contributed to
that jam too, notably Will Palin, but it was Bowie
who appropriated it. David had messed around
with some words that afternoon at least one
person remembers a variant of the song that went
Were bussing, were all bussing but by the
time they reached New York, ready for their
prestigious slot at Carnegie Hall on 28 September,
David had come up with a complete lyric, which
he sang in New York for Cyrinda Foxe, with whom
he was canoodling very publicly. The song was
called The Jean Genie; everyone recognised its
sensuous, reptilian hero as inspired by Iggy.

The Carnegie Hall show was, despite Bowies

forty-eight-hour bout of flu, a triumph, inspiring a
deluge of press coverage. Defries particularly
loved the Rolling Stone cover story, which
applauded Davids music but commented cynically
on how he was invariably flanked everywhere by
three security heavies. Defries quipped, with an
all-knowing smile, Without the security guards, he
wouldnt be on the cover of Rolling Stone, would
he?
For all Defries big talk, the initial number of
confirmed shows booked for David was tiny, but
the deluge of press and audience enthusiasm
generated a flurry of interest from promoters which
allowed MainMan to add another eight weeks of
dates. The extra shows seemed to vindicate
Defries genius in promoting David as if he were
already Americas biggest star, but the empty seats
inside many venues would take their toll, both on
MainMans finances and Davids psyche. In the
UK, David was not yet mainstream, but he had
enough fans for the glitter kids to gather in little
groups and brave the derision of rockers who

hated that poof Bowie. In American cities with a

good radio station or a cool head-shop, likeminded fans could gather and the venue would be
full. But outside of those cosmopolitan enclaves,
few fans ventured out, and in the Midwest many of
the venues seats were conspicuously empty.
Normally an English band touring the USA could
rely on their record company for expertise on the
ground. But this was the downside of Defries
obsession with signing to RCA, where David
would be the biggest fish in a small pond. David
was stuck on the worst record label in the world,
says Dai Davies, who was sent out to rustle up
more shows. And ultimately, the more money they
took off RCA to try and make things happen, the
longer it would take David to pay them back.
In the first few weeks, though, the feeling of
infallibility was hardly punctured. When the band
convened in New Yorks RCA studio on 6
October, most of them were surprised to find they
were going to record their Greyhound bus jam,
The Jean Genie the session was so rushed that
co-producer Ken Scott didnt even make it to New

York. The song was like a musical collage; the

titled blended Jean Genet Lindsay Kemps idol
with Eddie Cochrans rocker, Jeanie Jeanie
Jeanie. But the sound was a complete lift how
could anyone have the cheek to record it? We all
looked at each other and just thought, This is Im
a Man! said Bolder, who like Ronson knew the
song via The Yardbirds version. It was recorded
in just a couple of takes the mid-song crescendo
of The Yardbirds version was moved to the
beginning, while the chorus was as simple as could
be, with the band merely staying on one chord. It
was a consummate example of explicit homage in
a grand tradition, for as Underwood and Bowie
both knew, Muddy Waters had borrowed the riff
from Bo Diddley in the first place as would
Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn a few short weeks
later, for the Sweets hit Blockbuster.
Released on 25 November, The Jean Genie
would hit number two in the UK. It was a one-trick
pony of a song, but that didnt matter. It kept up the
momentum; Lous Walk on the Wild Side shot up
the chart in parallel. Lous hit was self-

consciously cool, Davids childishly simple: both

contributed equally to Davids growing legend.
Meanwhile, the tour dates continued, moving south
from Detroit and Chicago to St Louis and Kansas
City. There was gossip that David had turned to
drink to help cope with the stress of some of the
poorly attended shows in the Midwest, notably St
Louis. Not true, according to his inner circle, but
Ian Hunter, whose own tour with Mott The Hoople
criss-crossed the states that autumn, bumped into
his mentor several times and noted glimpses of
sadness. Some of it was sheer bewilderment;
George Underwood remembers Davids worries
that audiences werent even reacting to the shows,
but they were simply open-mouthed, in amazement
and shock!
Despite the niggling worries, there were long
periods when David would be up, working on
songs or enjoying the peaceful train journeys.
David, accompanied by George and Brigit, or
Ronson, savoured the names of the huge beasts
Texas Chief, San Francisco Zephyr and vied for

a place in the Zephyrs magnificent Vist-a-Dome, a

Plexiglas viewing pod which gave panoramic
views across the ever-changing landscape. A
couple of the band or friends, gladly one and the
same most of the time, would often come and sit
with me on these stretches, says David. Ronson
would love it, so too would my old chum George
Underwood and his wife Birgit. At about 10 at
night wed creep up there, the air rich with the
smell of grass, and laze around with guitars and a
bottle of wine, watching the western moon get
bigger and shinier into the early hours of the
morning.
The gorgeous Drive In Saturday was inspired
by the succession of images he saw on the train to
Phoenix, and debuted in the show there on 4
November but there was a constant conflict
between the buzz of ideas and the demands of his
schedule, from which he was starting to shrink.
The work had to be defined by him, but that
wasnt necessarily what had to be done when
youre on the road. It was always a conflict,
remembers Zanetta. If left to his own devices hed

stay in a dark room in bed all day long. You had to

force him to do things. The tour progressed with
bursts of activity, then sudden stopovers, a
disorientating existence in which many people
Angie most obviously, but David too seemed
almost manic depressive, oscillating between
energy highs business and sexual and days of
utter, exhausted torpor.
The nervous energy carried David through to
Los Angeles for a four-day break before two
shows at Santa Monica, dates full of promise
thanks to the enthusiastic promotion of Rodney
Bingenheimer, who by now had opened Rodneys
English Disco on Sunset Strip. A mirror-walled
temple to English glam, it was laid on with every
staple a Brit muso could need: Watneys Bitter,
sausage rolls and teenage Valley girls. It was this
period that most closely resembled Fellinis
Satyricon: the streets were full of boys and girls,
men and women offering services both sexual and
pharmaceutical; Quaaludes were the drug du jour,
popped like jellybeans by most of the crew,
although David rarely, if ever, indulged. Prompted

by Lisa Robinson, Leee Childers had booked band,

crew and hangers-on into the swanky Beverly Hills
Hotel, where the two stars Bowie and Defries
had their own bungalows. Elton John overlapped
with Bowie on their stay; David dropped in on him
and found him isolated, dwarfed by a mountain of
vinyl records. Cyrinda Foxe was flown over from
New York. Andy Warhol, film director Paul
Morrissey and Iggy Pop were on the scene, while
Rodneys girls descended on the party in a frenzy
of what Tony Zanetta called kiddie decadence.
Cracked Actor, written over that week, was an
almost literal depiction of the sleaze on offer; the
line since he pinned you baby was a straight lift
from the paranoid drug argot developed by Lou
Reed and John Cale in the Velvets: pinning
someone meant they were on drugs youd pinned
them, youd got them, says Cale.
Rodneys regular Nancy McCrado remembers
her friends Sable and Queenie, both of them in
their early teens, sneaking into Mick Ronsons
room, stripping off their clothes and waiting for
him, naked. Mick was really upset about it

pushed them out and locked the door. Later,

Rodneys girl Lori Madox sneaked with a friend
into Davids room. According to Madox, David
was tired but eventually proved more obliging than
his lieutenant.
Roadie Robin Mayhew, like McCrado,
remembers that Ronno wasnt involved in the
dubious scenes he was more selective. Ronson
s focus was legendary; the perfect example was
the afternoon at the Beverly Hill Hotel that he
spent running carefully through a pre-show
checklist with the roadies. He asked them a couple
of follow-up questions, then the moment that
business was concluded and the conversation
started to wander, coolly informed them Thats
enough and ushered them out of the door so he
could attend to the blonde whod been waiting
patiently on the bed. Most of the others did take
advantage of Rodneys girls made up of a mix of
unsupervised rich kids or more desperate street
kids, according to regular, Kathy Heller. The girls
were part of LAs rich cornucopia of pleasures,
which also included Lobster Thermidor, which

everyone ordered from room service, or the

Quaaludes offered by the young Hollywood boys
who were desperate to get access. Even for those
whod seen some of the excesses of the sixties,
like Robin Mayhew, It was a total eye-opener.
For The Spiders, the roadies and bodyguards,
this was their first experience of Los Angeles; it
could never be equalled. The frenetic, confused
buzz surrounding them intensified from the moment
Mike Garson revealed he was a member of the
Church of Scientology. He talked to David first,
and was rebuffed (What a ludicrous idea,
expecting David to sublimate his ego to L. Ron
Hubbard, quips writer Mick Farren) before
approaching the rest of the organisation.
Bowie, Ronson and Bolder loved Garsons
musical input, which offset his religious fervour.
For David, the issue became a joke, and he
labelled the pianist Garson the Parson. But for
the junior members of the crew, Scientology
became a serious issue. The other guys became
obsessed, there was this righteousness about them,
that they knew no wrong, remembers Mayhew. It

became bizarre, very black and dark.

Garsons evangelism for Scientology started
taking effect when they arrived in LA, where he
persuaded most of the entourage to visit the
Scientology Center and each musician was
assigned his own mentor. He tried to get me into it
and failed, says Bolder, who during his visit saw
all these weird people doing weird things, tests,
mind games I didnt want to know. Shortly
afterwards, Bolder returned to his hotel room after
a heavy nights drinking at [famous Hollywood
nightclub] the Whisky, only to open the door and
see Garson and a woman whod been assigned to
recruit him, sitting on his bed. Bolder threw them
out, but Mike hounded me for years. But Woody
did go back in there. And I think Scientology had a
big influence on him.
Woody Woodmansey became the Spiders bestknown Scientology convert, and from his first
sessions with the cult, says Bolder, he was taught
to be more positive and speak your mind. And if
youre a type of person who speaks their mind
anyway youre going to speak it even more. He

was confident that he was a Scientologist and

everything was gonna be wonderful and he
couldnt fail.
Defries took little interest in the details of what
was going on backstage, where the atmosphere
was turning nasty and Stuey George in particular
was becoming far too heavy, says Mayhew. If
there were fans hanging around hed lay into them.
Were saying, Dont be so heavy hed be
shouting at the kids, effing and blinding, and it was
very scary for them, this heavy, coloured guy with
a limp, who looked like hed been through it,
heading for them. Tony Frost, the second of
Davids three bodyguards, became another
Scientology convert, adding to the haze of hype and
confusion emanating from the MainMan circus.
Much of the edge, intensity and euphoria of that
LA week was audible in the Santa Monica shows
on 20 and 21 October. They were a triumph, the
seventeen-song set offering delight after delight,
running across what would be five Bowie albums.
Defries had sold the tour as the biggest by an
English act since The Beatles; that nights radio

recording, for KMET, suggests that if anything hed

undersold his charges, for this set was more
adventurous, more visceral and more proficient
than anything the Fabs had delivered on stage in
America. For years, the recording of the opening
nights performance would be a definitive rock n
roll bootleg; in the mid-seventies, many English
punk bands would admire its high-octane assault,
and copy Ronsons modified chord sequence on
Waiting for the Man.
In the couple of days before David departed for
San Francisco, he was required to sprinkle his
magic fairy dust on yet another MainMan album,
namely the tracks that Iggy and The Stooges had
assembled at CBS studios in London. Davids
relationship with Iggy was complex; while Lou
Reed would always pay due fealty to David, Iggy
was already confiding to friends that the Ziggy
album sounded Mickey Mouse. When the singer
heard The Jean Genie, he felt hed been
assimilated. I just rolled my eyes and said, Oh
my God not only has he done The Yardbirds but
hes done me too! That was when I first realised

he was taking a lot off me. The web of mutual

respect and distrust was complicated by the fact
that Angie had had affairs with The Stooges Ron
Asheton celebrated for his droll humour, he
resembled a young Philip Seymour Hoffman and
owned a scarily comprehensive collection of Nazi
uniforms and then James Williamson, the dark,
glowering lead guitarist who cordially disliked
David but was, says Angie, smart. He knew when
to keep quiet.
For all the openness of the Bowies marriage, it
was a messy business, a dumb thing to do, admits
Williamson. When he had met Bowie back in
Haddon Hall, David had been enthusiastic and
talkative. During the Iggy mixing sessions at LAs
Western Sound he was tense, preoccupied, this
super-stilted kind of stiff guy, says Williamson.
The mix was an exercise in damage limitation:
James and Iggy had jumbled up the instruments on
the multitrack and all David could do was pull out
a few instruments from the sonic holocaust, adding
an effect here and there. The results were, a few
years later, the prime influence on seventies punk.

But at the time it was the first of many half-cocked

projects. And soon, Iggy and his Stooges would
soon be sent to MainMans luxurious new house in
the Hollywood Hills, where they would be ignored
by Defries and return to their old, druggy ways.
The last weeks of that first US tour included
several
cancellations,
poorly
attended
performances in San Francisco and Seattle,
arguments between Defries, Davies and the RCA
staff on the ground and friction between the British
and American halves of the entourage. None of
those problems affected Davids songwriting, or
his performances, which were riveting, night after
night; when he was up he was great company,
camping it up with the Pork crew, or taking the
piss with the Yorkshire crowd. Yet behind the
scenes, the relationship that had sustained him for
the last two years was splintering.
Its impossible to pinpoint the moment at which
David and Angies marriage was irrevocably
doomed. By the autumn of 1972, Defries was
gunning for Angie, irritated that shed used her
initiative to rescue the remaining Stooges, whod

been stranded in London without their singer.

Although their plane fares, which Angie billed to
MainMain, represented a trifling amount compared
to the huge sums the company was haemorrhaging
on the cancelled US dates, it was Angies alleged
profligacy that Defries fixed on.
For Tony Zanetta, who occasionally found
himself miserable and isolated on the bus, a
defining moment came during one of the first tour
stopovers, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Hed noticed
how David would often step out and become the
focus of attention but at other times would
withdraw, lost in thought, or nerves. In Erie, David
had retreated to his room when Angie started
fooling around with a bodyguard, Anton Jones,
the two of them skinny-dipping in the motel pool.
David was like a lost child, looking for Angie,
says Zanetta. Im sure he was very vulnerable and
nervous. I didnt think about it at the time what
did I know?
Angie had been jealous of Davids wellpublicised affair with Cyrinda Foxe in New York;
making loud remarks about her relationship with

Anton seemed to be her way of getting back at him.

He makes me scream! she announced to Zanetta
and Davies, apparently referring to his sense of
humour, but with an obvious double-entendre. It
was an incredibly unhealthy situation.
Angie, maybe more than anyone, had helped
David get to America. But now they were here, her
antics made for one prima donna too many. In
reaction, Zanetta sacked Anton Jones, while from
now on Defries would try and separate Angie from
the touring party. According to Dai Davies, who
witnessed Angie and Antons banishment, Defries
response, however cruel, was the only practical
one. Its a simple question of management, with
thirty-four people and the trucks and everything
else, with a tour that wasnt that successful. You
can fall in behind one temperamental person. You
cant fall in behind two. It becomes a nightmare.
Angie and David had exchanged wedding wristbands rather than the customary rings for their
marriage in Bromley; it was during the last days of
this tour that Davids were snatched by a fan. It
was highly symbolic, I thought, said David

recently. Our marriage was pretty much over in

all but name. We were to see less and less of each
other as the next year rolled around.
One can only assume that it was Scott
Richardson who unwittingly contributed to the
breakdown. The singer an old friend of Iggys
from the Detroit rock scene had met Angie when
shed stopped over in Ann Arbor with The
Stooges. He joined her for her reunion with David
in Cleveland, and soon became her official lover
and he thought Davids friend. Caught in the
centre of this unconventional mnage, he regards
their open marriage as optimistic, naive: a loving
arrangement that also represented a Faustian pact.
They had this open relationship that the fans and
all the world knew about. They utilised all that to
seduce the world and it was incredibly effective.
But what they were trying to do with each other
ultimately backfired. And my little part, if it did
end up causing distress, I apologise.
If David felt sexual jealousy of Angie he
concealed it well. When David took up with
Cyrinda Foxe, Angie indulged in a classic defence

mechanism, becoming chums with Cyrinda, and

copying her haircut. David took on a similar role
with Richardson, becoming his rock n roll buddy.
Richardson observed that David was pulling
everybody left and right and she was doing the
same thing. And fantastic as that was for the
publicity of the Ziggy Stardust era it was also
incredibly destructive. David relied on Angie for
support she was the one who encouraged him
when his nerve failed: when he worried about
wearing the outrageous Kansai Yamamoto
jockstrap outfit in Japan, for instance. Yet by the
end of the US trip, David seemed to have bowed to
Defries restriction, and demanded Angie obey the
old, sexist musicians rule of no wives on tour.
David would just get in a furious mood [when
Angie was around] because maybe she was too
outrageous or maybe she took over too much of
the limelight, says Suzi Fussey, who now worked
as Davids PA. I honestly dont know.
Watching David at close hand, and working
together with him later, Richardson developed
bottomless respect for his abilities. As for Angie,

he says, I admired her so much as a human being.

Yet he looked on as the things that David counted
on her for got diminished by the fact that there was
so much sex going on. I lived in Haddon Hall and I
used to wake under a pile of bodies. I thought
having been on the road in America I knew what
the rock n roll life was. I didnt have a clue until
I went to England.
By the time David and The Spiders had returned
to New York on 3 December, Defries was already
planning a Japanese tour, and persuading RCA to
co-promote Davids return to the States. During the
stay, David recorded his own version of All the
Young Dudes and a new song, Drive In
Saturday. When he met Ian Hunter a few days
later, on 10 December, he played him the songs,
offering the latter for release; Hunter told him it
was too complicated for Mott. By now, Hunter
was worried about being regarded as Bowies
creature, but he listened attentively to Davids
advice, which was incisive, including the
observation that it was impossible to run a band as
a democracy. Despite his respect for David,

Hunter was growing suspicious of the MainMan

cavalcade, and kept his MainMan contract in his
suitcase; he would never sign it, despite several
reminders.
In spite of his concerns, Hunter remained full of
admiration for Bowie, who was eight years
younger than him, but more worldly and analytical.
The Mott singer concluded that David was
holding up well under the pressure which was
about to be ratcheted up a few more notches with
an imminent short UK tour followed by a return to
the US and then a short run of dates in Japan. A
few hours after his chat with Hunter, Bowie set
sail for London, the boat-trip a welcome relief
before the onslaught was renewed.
*
The British press had closely reported the triumphs
of the US tour for all the problems, it was
obvious that David had made much more of an
impact than Marc Bolan, whod also toured
America than autumn. Two homecoming shows at
the Rainbow before Christmas had a celebratory
air, with David appealing for donations and, on the

24th, collecting a truckful of cuddly toys to be

delivered to children in the Barnardos homes
across London, to which Haywood had devoted so
much of his life.
David, Angie and Zowie spent their Christmas
together at Haddon Hall, a brief respite before
work started again, their family gathering
augmented by dozens of fans singing in the street
and, according to press reports, camping in the
garden. Then it was back to work on the 28th, with
a string of shows, starting in Manchester,
interrupted by sessions back at Trident.
Completed over December and January, Aladdin
Sane its title announced to the camply vague
interviewer Russell Harty on 17 January 1973
bore all the marks of its rushed genesis. Yet this
was as much a blessing as a curse, for while songs
were at a premium with a re-recording of The
Prettiest Star and a cover of the Stones Lets
Spend the Night Together making up the numbers
there was a freshness and grandeur to the
recording, even if the internal logic was not as
well developed as Ziggys. Mike Garsons piano

in particular added an anarchic, decadent edge,

most obviously on the title track, in a solo which to
this day he counts as an amazing moment in his life.
I played a blues solo and David said, No, thats
not what Im looking for. Then I played a little
Latin solo. No, thats not what Im looking for.
David was relaxed, chatting easily to Garson,
remembering their conversations on the tour bus.
Then he said to me, Well, you told me about
playing on the avant-garde scene in New York.
Why dont you try something like that? I said,
Are you serious? He said, Absolutely. That
whole solo was one shot, one take boom, that
was it. But it came about because he got it out of
me.
Garson was one of many musicians struck by
Davids growing ability to inspire musicians to
reach inside themselves and come up with ideas
buried deep within their consciousness. Matthew
Fisher, who dropped in on the Trident sessions,
was also struck by the way Bowie would
communicate ideas. He issues very strange
instructions to people not in the prosaic way I

would do it. He was talking to the brass players

using terms like renaissance and impressionist
it was very esoteric, but people seemed to
understand.
For Garson, asked to sprinkle his piano, like
magic fairy dust, over the albums best songs,
Davids approach was liberating; soon Mike
realised he was expected to bring something new
to every track, contributing, for instance, a warped
stride piano part to Time that was brilliantly
counterpointed by Ronsons perfectly judged
guitar. That was a great piece; it was a chance for
me to play in a whole other way, says Garson.
Youve got to understand, if the inspiration is
given to you and it was given me how can you
go wrong?
Garsons bravery in the studio, his willingness
to take musical risks on the first or second take,
was so perfect, says Ken Scott. You could see it
was pushing the envelope. However, not every
musician was proving so obliging, for reasons not
unconnected with Garson or, rather, his religion.
Drummer Woody Woodmansey had always had

strong opinions, says Trevor Bolder, but as he

fell more deeply under the influence of Scientology
he became even more opinionated. Woody had
already clashed with Bowie over such trivial
matters as the jacket hed wear on The Russell
Harty Show; now, his attitude affected the music,
too. As they were laying down the backing track
for Panic in Detroit, David asked Woody to play
a Bo Diddley rhythm. No way, its too obvious,
Woodmansey retorted. Ronson had a word; Woody
was immovable. He wouldnt have any of it,
according to Trevor Bolder. In the end, Woody
recorded his drum part much as he wanted David
and Mick asked Geoff MacCormack to overdub
congas and other percussion to get the rhythm
theyd had in mind.
Panic in Detroit was among the last songs
recorded for Aladdin Sane, the final overdubs laid
down as Ronson and Bowie rounded up musicians
for a return to America, just a couple of days later.
John Hutchinson was sitting in his Scarborough
bedsit, when he got a call from Ronson, who asked
if he was still playing guitar, then handed the phone

to David. Are you up for it? David asked, and he

was in. Sax players Ken Fordham and Brian
Wishaw
were
session
regulars.
Geoff
MacCormack, Davids old Bromley schoolmate,
got the call to join up for backing vocals and to
keep David company on the tour, now that Angie
was banished. MacCormack duly packed in his job
a t Construction News and boarded the SS
Canberra with David, where they settled into the
routine of long dinners and nights at the bar,
exchanging Oscar Wilde and Bosie witticisms.
Soon after their arrival in New York, David
took Geoff down to Maxs to see Biff Rose, whose
Fill Your Heart hed covered on Hunky Dory;
they were more impressed, though, by a new act,
Bruce Springsteen, who was sharing the bill.
During rehearsals, David was vibed-up, almost
ecstatic as he chatted with his old mate John
Hutchinson. There was no hint of reproach that
Hutch had left David, back in 1969; instead, David
shared his excitement. Whodve thought wed all
get here? Then back at the Gramercy Hotel, it was
straight into one of Davids customary bonding

sessions, as he gave Hutch a run-through of his

latest musical discoveries This is Roxy Music
the singers a guy from Newcastle, he studied with
[the pop artist] Richard Hamilton.
After rehearsals with the new, bigger band at the
RCA soundstage (Harry Belafonte dropped by and
politely asked them to turn down the volume)
David took Hutch, Geoff and Stuey to see the
Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, where theyd
be playing a few days later. Absorbed by their
ludicrously camp high-kicking act, David confided
to Hutch that he intended to descend from the gods,
just like the cabaret they were watching, as part of
their act. For a man who now refused to stay in
rooms above the hotels fourth floor, claiming
vertigo, this was true devotion to his art.
On the opening night of their second US tour on
14 February, 1973, the show was more grandiose
than ever, with five costume changes for David
alone; the news that Salvador Dali was in the
house generated a special buzz, in a hectic night
which culminated in David succumbing to a
theatrical fainting fit. Whether this was a Lindsay

Kemp-style act of drama, or genuine exhaustion,

witnesses like MacCormack are still not sure
but it generated headlines worldwide.
Davids recovery was evidently rapid, for by
the next night he hit the town again, ending up at a
reception for Stevie Wonder at the club Genesis,
which was packed with the citys soul talent.
Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight were hanging
out, and broke into song, accompanied by Ava
Cherry, a striking black model with bleached
blonde hair. David walked straight up to Ava and
asked, Are you a singer?
Yeah, Ava assured him, stretching the truth a
little, before a bystander introduced them. Ive
been listening to your albums for a month, she told
him. I think theyre incredible. This was not a
total exaggeration; Cherrys manager had helped
engineer the meeting, hoping it would advance her
career. But Ava was fascinated by this outlandish
figure: a model of English charm and good
manners, buzzing with energy, but content to go
with the flow, even when she declined his
invitation back to the Gramercy. Within the next

couple of days, though which were packed with a

trip to see Charles Mingus, hours spent listening to
records and sharing opinions, attendance at
rehearsals, and then an informal audition where
Defries assessed her singing they became lovers.
Then the very next day were up and getting
breakfast, says Cherry, and all of a sudden the
door knocks and its Angie. Darling! How are
you? So Im standing there and you can picture the
look on my face!
Once shed been briefed by David about his
open marriage, Ava was shocked, simultaneously
intimidated and impressed by Angie, and really
depressed. I said to David, Why didnt you tell
me? Still, she found herself a little bit in love
with David, as well as entranced by the intriguing
cast of characters around him. Just before David
left town, he told her hed like her to join the tour
as backing singer. Soon Cherry left her job and
apartment, to wait in Chicago where, instead of
confirmation, she would receive a telegram saying,
Sorry, tour has been cancelled. Informed that
David would catch up with her later, Ava

concluded, Thanks very much. Thats completely

messed up my life.
For Cherry, the realisation that she could be
taken up then discarded like a childs toy was an
unwanted insight into the behaviour of stars and
their retinue. It was a lesson that many who passed
into the orbit of David Bowie in the forthcoming
months would share.

Ray Stevenson
The debut of The Hype, with Tony
Visconti, left, and new guitarist Mick

Ronson, out of view, 22 February, 1970;

the antecedents both of The Spiders from
Mars and glam rock.

Pictorial Press
They tried to have a new kind of
marriage, an open marriage, and it was
absolutely brilliant what that
represented. Bromley Registry Office,
20 March, 1970, David with new wife

Angie and mother Peggy who told

friends she had turned up uninvited.

Ron Burton/Mirrorpix
Oh! You Pretty Things: David, Angie
and new-born Zowie, summer 1971, in
the midst of the sessions for Hunky
Dory. Stranded on a dysfunctional label,
dismissed as a one-hit wonder, labelled
a pervert by BBC producers, David
Bowie had changed not only his look and
lifestyle, but the way he wrote and made
music. He cited where he was going to
be. And then he did it, says one of his
musicians.

Barrie Wentzell
Im gay and I always have been.
Davids Melody Maker interview,
Regent Street, London, January, 1972.
There was no doubt that this would
work, says photographer Barrie
Wentzell. Writer Michael Watts adds,
He knew exactly what he was doing.

Ray Stevenson
This was serious. The Spiders make
mayhem, Imperial College London, 12
February, 1972. David fell into the
crowd once, but would just get up and
carry on for the tour that marked his
ascension to stardom.

ITV/Rex Features
He came, not just for your daughters, but
for your sons, too. Starman, Top of the
Pops, 6 July, 1972, was a moment of
epiphany for a generation of teenagers.

 Mick Rock 1973, 2010

David and Mick Ronson share a roast
and two veg on the train to Aberdeen, 15
May, 1973. Over recent weeks, manager
Tony Defries had quashed the revolt of
The Spiders and arranged to groom
Ronson as MainMans next star.

Mirrorpix
I really did want it to come to an end.
Tired, uncommunicative, David arrives
for his Hammersmith retirement, 3
July, 1973. To break up a band like that
is astonishing, says one friend, Scott
Richardson. I have to credit Bowie with

having a lot of courage to say, Im not

coming back.

Harry Myers/Rex Features

Once they could enjoy the fruits of
success, the cracks started to appear.
Smiles for the camera at the premiere of
Live and Let Die, 5 July a rare photo
which shows manager Tony Defries

(right) stepping into the limelight. David

and Angies marriage was already
damaged; soon his relationship with
Defries would splinter, too.

Kate Simon

Cold. Calculated. Recording Big

Brother at Olympic Studios, with
pianist Mike Garson, October, 1974.
Bowie now planned to out-do the Stones
by adopting their loose guitar rock and
their glorification of cocaine.

Bob Gruen

David with his new official mistress,

Ava Cherry, soon after his move to New
York in April, 1974; wife Angie, who
had in turn recruited her own official
companion, Scott Richardson, would
henceforth be kept at a distance.

Terry ONeill/Getty Images

David dons gouster gear and declares,
Im going to record a session. Making
Young Americans, Sigma Sound,
Philadelphia, accompanied by fellow
Bromley cub-scout and lifetime friend,
Geoff MacCormack.

Dagmar/TopFoto
Cracked: July, 1974, on the Diamond

Dogs tour which was characterised by

an abundance of cocaine. The drugs
were apparent in so many ways, recalls
one witness. They actually seemed to
add to the overall vibe there was a
darkness to it.

PART TWO
Where Things Are Hollow

11
Star
David acted as if everything was
completely normal. I dont know if he
was delusional and thought no one knew.
Suzi Fussey
To break up a band like that is
astonishing. I have to credit Bowie with
having a lot of courage: to say, Im not
coming back.
Scott Richardson

David Bowies three- or four-day idyll with Ava

Cherry in New York marked a new phase his life
an era when he would be surrounded by people

using him to advance their careers, when

subordinates would overlook every aspect of his
working day and when the worlds media would
pry into every aspect of his life.
Davids friends from 1971 and 1972 retain
countless, varying impressions of the man, from
David the iceman to David the boyish dreamer, but
Iggy Pop probably describes it best: Youre
talking about a rather worldly, knowledgeable
young buck who was ready to go out into the world
and shoot his bolt. But who was focused on a
particular target success.
That drive for success would cause confusion or
resentment from those, like Iggy, Mick Ronson or
countless others, who had a different agenda. By
1974 Iggy would be accusing David that fuckin
carrot-top of sabotaging his work. Few of
those left, damaged and bitter, in Davids wake
would realise that the newly emerged star was as
damaged by the process as they were.
In the heady opening days of 1973, though,
David was relaxed and sweet according to his
new lover, Ava Cherry. The routine was well

established: a morning call from Tony Zanetta or

road manager Jaime Andrews, followed by a long
bus ride, which for the Spiders was invariably set
to the only two tapes they had on the eight-track
player: The Stylistics and The Buddy Rich Band.
Check-in, soundcheck, a quiet moment as David
did his make-up, show, and only then was it time to
relax: Geoff MacCormack hanging out with David
or other band members; Ronson hanging with
Hutch; Woody and Trevor with each other, or
occasionally their wives. Once theyd all left New
York, Bowies main social contact with the band
was at the aftershow parties, which were usually
decorated by the best-looking local girls, selected
from all the contenders by Davids hairdresser and
PA, Suzi Fussey. This was where Hutch first
learned the phrase, No head, no backstage pass:
such transactions were always more explicit and
more efficient in America. With Geoff to talk to,
Bowie spent less time with Mick, who would chat
to Hutch over Irish coffees in the bar. Meanwhile
Garson the Parson would be preaching the benefits
of Scientology to new band members like Hutch

and Fordham.
For this second jaunt around the States, David
took in a similar cavalcade of sights: the viewing
cars in the trains, the Stetsons in Nashville, the
routine at Elviss favourite hotel, the Peabody
Hotel in Memphis, where a trio of ducks waddled
through the hotel lobby; each sight shared with the
wide-eyed Geoff MacCormack. With a larger
crew, and Geoff in tow, David spent less and less
time with Trevor and Woody, too. Yet when they
did talk, he would reassure them, Dont worry,
were all going to be really, really rich. Trevor
and Mick were trusting until Woody
Woodmansey heard from Mike Garson that the new
pianist was on a $800 a week salary and, stunned,
shared the information with his fellow Spiders.
Woody and Trevor were on 50 a week. When
they complained to Defries, and asked when theyd
get to see the riches David had promised, the
MainMan boss was cold as ice. Never mind what
Bowie told you youre getting its what I tell you
youre getting.
It was Mick Ronson who decided hed had

enough of this run-around about pay; a few weeks

into the American dates he called Dennis Katz,
now managing Lou Reed, to see if he could secure
a record deal for The Spiders without their
singer. Katz soon called to say hed secured a sixfigure advance from CBS. The trio were buoyed
up, until a traitorous roadie informed Defries of the
bands scheme. Characteristically hard-ball,
Defries informed CBS that Katz had no right to
negotiate for The Spiders, cutting him out of the
deal entirely. Then he called a meeting with the
band, and emolliently informed them, Why didnt
you tell me you wanted a record deal? RCA are
willing to sign you theyll pay you an advance
upfront, if you want some money? According to
Trevor Bolder, Defries then embarked on a
textbook divide-and-rule strategy, seeking out
Ronson and offering him his own solo deal.
Meanwhile, as he plotted with Ronson, Defries
lulled Davids rhythm section into a false sense of
security. Normally he barely bothered to register
their presence, now, when Woody Woodmansey
returned to the attack with his usual bluntness,

demanding the sidemen receive a rise to 500 a

week, Defries was uncharacteristically helpful,
assuring them hed discuss the money situation
with RCA. During their last American dates in
California, the manager reported back, RCA have
agreed to pay you 500 a week, he told them. But
you cant have that until we get to England until
then, you can have 200 a week, but when we get
to England youll get all the money, upfront [as
back-pay]. Delighted that Defries had finally seen
sense, the Yorkshire duo chorused, That sounds
all right.
On the surface, David remained friendly. He
loved Woodys drumming, but it was probably the
drummers bloody-mindedness during the Aladdin
Sane sessions that marked the turning point. Once
Defries had told David of Woody and Trevors
treacherousness that theyd been planning to cut a
record deal behind his back the question of
Davids next musical move suddenly became
clearer.
Davids attitude to Mick Ronson was more
complex; the guitarist was stubborn, but he was

obliging, a problem-solver and as close a musical

friend as he had. Defries wanted a Ronson solo
album both to head off The Spiders revolt and to
add another act to his entertainment stable. David
had recently discovered a Richard Rodgers song,
Slaughter on Fifth Avenue, and saw it as a
brilliant vehicle for Ronsons own solo album. He
even suggested his friend and Angies lover
Scott Richardson as a collaborator. Encouraged by
the vision of a glittering solo career, with a
musical agenda provided by David, Ronson went
along with the plan. As the entire tour party
prepared for their most ambitious trip to date a
ten-show stint in Japan: still exotic, unexplored
territory for most British musicians Davids
rhythm section were content, unsuspecting, for
what would turn out to be The Spiders last ride.
Geoff MacCormack, who kept David company
now that Angie was being encouraged to keep
her distance, had become an enthusiastic convert to
the luxury of international cruising. He was
disappointed to find his second trip, from Los
Angeles to Yokahama, was on the SS Oronsay, a

1940s liner in the twilight of its career that was

nicknamed SS Rancid by the childhood friends.
They spent the trip practising phrases from Geoffs
Japanese primer, or treating passengers to Latin
records theyd picked up in New York. Finally
arriving in Yokahama on 5 April to a fivehundred-strong welcoming crowd, David was
resplendent in a wide-lapelled tartan jacket,
flanked by frowning matrons irritated at the
intrusion, his excitement at the bizarre culture clash
equalled only by his exhaustion.
It was during this leg of the tour that many of the
contradictions in the MainMan empire were
becoming exposed. Endless stories of The
Stooges depredations filtered out of LA in those
weeks, with allegations theyd spent company cash
on smack and abortions for groupies. Defries,
always disapproving of drugs use, ordered them
thrown out of MainMains mansion on Torrenson
Drive.
David was upset, but didnt attempt to talk Tony
out of his decision. Then, within weeks of Iggys
sacking, another of Davids protgs left

MainMan, a split resulting from a management

meeting where a drunken, impassioned Tony
Zanetta proclaimed their business was now based
on stars, not boring rock n rollers. The next
day, sober, Zanetta was staggered to find his
outburst had inspired the sacking of Mott The
Hoople, the companys main rock n rollers.
(Their career was unharmed, for Ian Hunter,
sceptical of Defries, had never signed his
management contract.)
MainMans lack of focus and the way the
company was expanding in random fashion was
highlighted once the party hit Japan. When David
formed a mutual admiration society with Kansai
Yamamoto

championing his
designs,
accompanying his family to the Kabuki theatre
Defries promptly announced that he would now
represent the designer in the West, via a Japanese
division, MainMan Tokyo. That spring, Defries
also floated the notion that David was to star in a
movie based on Robert A. Heinleins Stranger in
a Strange Land. No names were attached to the
announcement, which was suspiciously vague. Its

likely the grandstanding was aimed as much at

RCA America as the general public, for while
Davids album sales were phenomenal in Britain
where Aladdin Sane debuted at number one in
May, bumping The Beatles Red and Blue
greatest hits albums off the top they were
underwhelming in the US.
In Japan, though, Davids was the biggest debut
tour of recent years; every aspect of his distinctive
rock n roll recipe the clothes, make-up, all the
theatrical elements seemed to strike a chord with
the Japanese youth. For all the band, mobbed at
stage doors every night, drinking in the deliciously
alien Japanese culture by day, the tour was an
idyllic experience; until Woody, outraged that his
promised wage rise had not yet materialised, once
more set out to confront Defries, with bassist
Trevor Bolder in tow.
As ever, Woody came straight to the point. This
is a joke! Weve been promised more money, and
now we find the roadies are getting more than us!
Defries, unused to being challenged, momentarily
lost his cool. Well? Id rather give the money to

the road-crew than to you.

Woody shot back, Well, if thats your attitude
you can stick it up your arse! before bundling his
bassist out of the room. Shortly after the meeting,
Woody announced he and Trevor were going on
strike. Mick Ronson eventually talked them around.
Dont make trouble, he told them, not when its
going so well.
But it was not going well.
Even as David was being vibed up by Defries,
who grandly told him how much money theyd
make in Japan, the last reserves of that calm, that
energy, were being drained. On their last night in
Japan, Geoff and David spent the evening dining in
an exquisitely peaceful restaurant, with Geoffs
newly acquired Chinese girlfriend, and Davids
companion, a beautiful, blue-eyed French-Japanese
woman. I knew he was trying to think of some
angle that would allow us to stay in Japan, says
MacCormack, but there was no way. The pair
had a boat to catch, the Felix Derzhinsky named
after the notorious founder of the KGB whose
crew and passengers were treated to an impromptu

Bowie and MacCormack performance of Space

Oddity and Amsterdam, followed by a sevenday train journey through Siberia and on to
Moscow. MacCormacks photos document the
endless steppes, stop-offs for food, and two days
in the dog-eared Moscow Intourist hotel. When
they finally reached East Berlin, the bombed-out
hulks of buildings seemed greyer and more
ominous than anything they recalled from 1950s
London. The memory would stay with them both.
The entire crew were weary on their return to
London. The costumes were frayed, too, held
together with home-made repairs. There was a
brief respite with a party at Haddon Hall which
Tony Visconti and new wife Mary Hopkin attended
but as if to confirm the unrelenting grind of what
was nearly sixteen months of repetitive, gruelling
touring, Davids Earls Court show on 12 May was
famously disastrous. Both lighting and PA were
pitifully inadequate for the venue, and the familiar
jing-jing-a-jing introduction of Rock n Roll
Suicide was transformed into, Jing-jing-a oh
shit, as rhythm guitarist John Hutchinson fell off

his podium in the stygian gloom. All the extra

musicians, including Hutch and the sax section,
were still reading charts on manuscript, which they
couldnt make out in the dark, while none of the
band could hear themselves through the lousy
monitoring.
The show was a disaster, but the negative press
it generated was forgotten as the tour rolled on into
June. Reviewers and audiences alike were
transfixed by the spectacle and the smoking music:
A total success, based on an inspired and uniquely
amazing talent, was Sounds verdict on the
Newcastle show. David was on a high; on 6 June,
he partied into the night at Hallam Towers, a
nouveau-riche hotel in Sheffield. Rival singers
Lulu and Labi Siffre happened to be in the city, and
played an impromptu show at the bar but their
gaze, and that of the audience, was fixed on David.
Lulus own star seemed in the descendant: it was
now a decade since shed first notched up hits like
Shout, while her Eurovision success of a few
years before seemed to signal a permanent move to
the lounge, chicken-ina-basket circuit. But the tiny

Scots singer was undeniably charismatic, with an

infectious energy. Later that evening she
disappeared and so did David, his absence
loudly publicised by Angie, who marched up and
down the hotel corridors knocking on doors in
search of her missing hubby. Witnesses like John
Hutchinson thought Angie seemed to enjoy the
drama of chasing her husband around, advertising
that Lulu had become another notch on the Bowie
bedpost. The hilarious episode was enjoyed by all
the band and crew; the next morning, Davids
shaven eyebrow seemed to curl a little, in
appreciation of the hubbub of gossip over the
previous nights events. But the episode also
illustrated the stress and drama generated by his
and Angies supposedly open marriage.
Throughout June, David Bowies defiantly
extravagant cavalcade was a much-needed burst of
colour in what was otherwise a grim summer, with
unemployment rising, and the UK paralysed by
strikes and overshadowed by an IRA bombing
campaign. The success of Lou Reeds Walk on the
Wild Side, a hit in both the US and UK that

summer, underlined Bowies magic touch

hearing Lou drawl how Candy Darling never lost
her head, even when she was giving head every
few hours on BBC Radio 1 represented a delicious
cultural marker for a generation, while Davids
own unstoppable momentum was illustrated by
Junes announcement that he would soon be
recording a new album in France, with yet another
American tour to follow in the autumn. Later in the
summer the BBCs Story of Pop magazine hit the
streets: the First Encyclopaedia of Pop, it started
with Elvis and ended with Bowie.
For a generation of kids, the Bowie tours
escapism, his visions of transcending the bonds of
earth, represented a vital beacon of hope, of
glamour. But on the tour itself, what had started out
as thrilling was becoming drudgery. Week by week
there was less camaraderie backstage; Bolder and
Woody hardly exchanged a word with David over
the summer, while Davids renewed friendliness
with Hutch had evaporated by the time they
returned to the UK. Ken Fordhams unflappability
endeared him to David, who named him Ken

Funky Fordham, because he so obviously wasnt.

But with shows at forty venues over fifty days,
with sixteen matinee performances, everyone felt
that Defries was working us to death, says
Bolder, who was amazed that David survived
without losing his voice. Instead, any damage
seemed psychological; during a days layoff in
Torquay, Devon, the band took off to see the sights
promoter Mel Bush lent Hutch his flash green
Rover to tour the countryside but David didnt
emerge from his room all day. No matter how nice
the day was, you wouldnt see him. He was going
very pale and thin, says Hutch. Davids charisma
still shone through, and still he seemed excited
and thrilled in the dressing room before he went
on, says Suzi Fussey, but there was a tense, almost
hysterical edge to his public persona. Sometimes
he seemed shaky, while his skin was stretched
over his skull, pale and waxy; the contrast with the
previous Januarys photos for Melody Maker,
when he looked joyous and gamine, is almost
painful to behold. Even Freddie Burettis
costumes, frayed and worn, were obviously at the

end of their life. As David recalls, it was during

these dates that his enthusiasm finally gave out. I
really did want it all to come to an end. I was
writing for a different kind of project and
exhausted and completely bored with the whole
Ziggy concept, couldnt keep my attention on the
performances with much heart. Strangely enough,
the rest of the tour was a success but I was
wasted and miserable.
In the run-up to the Hammersmith show on 3
July, only the roadies, MacCormack, Garson and
Ronson had been informed that this endless cycle
of euphoria, boredom, excitement and exhaustion
was coming to a close. It wasnt just Davids
stamina that was at breaking point MainMans
cash reserves were exhausted, too.
Around mid-June, Defries became aware that the
forthcoming US dates could expose MainMan to
huge losses. That same week, it became obvious
that Davids unparalleled, amazing streak of
creativity was coming to an end, with the
announcement that the next single would be a

Hunky Dory track, Life On Mars?.

Defries had performed an amazing financial
sleight of hand over the previous months, by
persuading RCA to underwrite his hefty financial
losses on the two American tours. With the
establishment of MainMan, more or less
independent of Laurence Myers, in June 1972, hed
lost access to his ex-partners cash reserves. From
that point the companys financial situation was
always on a knife edge. When, early in 1973, RCA
finally refused to underwrite the next US tour,
Defries decided to tackle the potential crisis headon: he would retire David. David would stave
off exhaustion, Defries would stave off a financial
catastrophe, the Bowie enigma would be sustained
and, a crucial side benefit, the troublesome
Spiders could be eliminated.
As David and Defries plans progressed, the
musicians, bar Ronson, remained oblivious.
Zanetta had asked a couple whether theyd like to
play with MainMans latest act, Ava Cherry. Why
would I want do that? Hutch had replied, happy in
the knowledge a tour of America was imminent,

with a possible jaunt to Australia thereafter, Im

in Davids band!
As for David, his secretiveness about their
imminent disbandment did not derive from sadism;
rather, this was theatre, the chance to ensure the
tours Hammersmith finale was a set-piece of the
most gripping drama. Pure showbiz, remembers
Suzi Fussey. He loved that. Scott Richardson, a
confidant of both Bowie and Ronson throughout the
final tour, knew what was coming, but still
reckoned to break up a band like that is
astonishing. I have to credit Bowie with having a
lot of courage: to say Im not coming back.
On the evening of the Hammersmith show,
David gave no clue as to the evenings
denouement. Suzi Fussey, ministering to him in the
dressing room, had been tipped off by Defries, but
had to feign ignorance, as did the roadies and the
various MainMan staff. David acted as if
everything was completely normal, she says. I
dont know if he was delusional and thought no one
knew. Despite the imminent drama, he seemed
rather more relaxed than normal, grateful for the

coming rest. Relieved, I think, says Fussey. He

had been frightened of becoming a parody of
himself.
Bolder, Woody and Hutch, for all their
exhaustion, were fired up to be playing the Odeon
and all three of them relished the presence of Jeff
Beck, guesting on guitar. Their attention was
mainly on Ronson, as Bowie and band rampaged
their way through what Sounds Martin Hayman
called one of the best concerts I have ever seen.
Hutch was the first one to get a hint that
something unusual was happening, when David
walked over for a word, the first time hed spoken
to him in weeks. Dont go straight into Rock n
Roll Suicide, David instructed his old friend.
Im going to say something there.
When David announced, Not only is it the last
show of the tour, but its the last show that well
ever do. Thank you! during the break, Hutch and
the others were confused. Then they saw Bolder
mouth the words, Hes fuckin sacked us! The
moment the closing notes of Rock n Roll
Suicide died out, Bowie and Ronson disappeared.

Woody and Trevor were left to find their own way

home.
Presiding over the glittering gathering marking
the tours close at the Cafe Royal the next night,
David posed alongside Mick Jagger; they were the
undoubted stars of a party that included Lou Reed,
Keith Moon, Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould. It
was a sweet moment, the two of them out-camping
the other, equals at last. Woody and Trevor were
rock n roll lepers, Trevor desperately
questioning Ronson who was non-committal, not
letting on hed known anything while Woodys
attitude was Bollocks. I want to do something
else, anyway. But the news of Woodys sacking
was not confirmed until he received a phone call
from a MainMan flunky a week later, the day of his
wedding to girlfriend June, officiated by Mike
Garson at the British Church of Scientology
headquarters.
Bolder, meanwhile, had heard nothing, until he
was asked up to a gathering at MainMan. Walking
in to see MacCormack, Zanetta and others
gossiping and pouring themselves drinks, Bolder

started to have a go at David What are you up

to? How can you treat people this way? when he
was pulled away by Mick Ronson. Keep your
mouth shut and dont say anything, otherwise youll
be gone as well. Just cool it and be quiet. When
Bowie spoke to him again, telling him his next
album would be a collection of covers, and started
playing some of the songs he intended to record,
Trevor did as Ronson advised. Only then did I
realise how much Mick was looking out for me. I
had a wife and kids, nobody else did, Mick had
been the best man at my wedding. So he protected
me.
By now, Scott Richardson had been recruited by
Bowie as a general rock n roll companion and
sounding board, accompanying him to gigs, helping
him choose songs for his covers album, and
delegated to assist with Ronsons solo album.
Richardson was one of a couple of people aware,
like Bowie, that Roxy Musics Bryan Ferry was
also planning a covers album the knowledge, if it
didnt inspire Bowies own covers collection,
certainly put a rocket under the project. Not only

was Ferry a rival, hed also had the audacity to

criticise Bowie in print the previous winter,
pointing out how he liked to push all [his] band
back like props in their little boxes.
The recordings at Chteau DHrouville a
glorious, slightly tatty, compact castle just outside
Paris where Marc Bolan had recorded The Slider
were cheerful on the surface, with long lunches
in the sun, but overshadowed by future portents,
each participant conscious this was the end of an
era. It didnt feel comfortable to me, says Ken
Scott. I had other things on my mind, my wife was
pregnant and I wanted to fly back to England. My
mind was elsewhere, and there were legal
problems, because my royalties werent getting
paid. And that seemed to be the general thing.
The awareness that this adventure was coming
to a close imbued the album with a kind of
desperate nostalgia. David, Ronson and
Richardson simply picked out a bunch of 45s The
Pretty Things Rosalyn, The Kinks Where Have
All the Good Times Gone, Syd and the Floyds
See Emily Play and played a couple of the

records to the band each morning; they learned

each song in the same key, then bashed it out.
David was more obviously disengaged from
Angie, at ease in the studio, enjoying the carefree
atmosphere of simply playing other peoples
songs, happy to let Mick Ronson bear most of the
musical burden while he honked away on his
schoolboy saxophone. He was nevertheless rushed,
as always, and keen to lay down his vocals as
quickly as possible. Ava Cherry was over in Paris
on a modelling job, and after tracking David down
to the Chteau, they spent cosy afternoons together
cuddled up before the huge Baroque fireplaces.
David was calm, but distracted, and Ava noticed
how he would defer his decisions to Tony Defries,
reliant on him almost like a child. For her to
become anything more than a temporary fixture in
Davids life, Tony had to give his approval: he
was the gatekeeper to Davids personal life, like a
father or a priest, and had to be honoured. Her
ritual offerings took the form of demo recordings,
which David recorded with Ava in the studio.
Over those weeks, Ava also observed Bowie

and Ronsons relationship up close. Mick seemed

very distraught there was some scuttle about him
doing a solo album and David wasnt totally happy
about it. Mick was both a friend who David
supported and a rival; just as with Bolan, David
wanted him to succeed, but was scared of being
overshadowed. Mick himself was enthused by the
challenge of a solo album a happy camper says
Ken Scott but according to Scott Richardson,
much as he knew things had to change, Ronson was
in mourning for his band and buried himself in
work. Really, he worked all the time, says
Richardson. Looking back on it now and listening
back to it, Ronson was the force to be reckoned
with musically and I think he was completely at
sea about his future because that band had a real
integrity. And they were gone. Bolder was later
told that David had only done the album, Pin Ups,
to keep the band happy. Considering Ronson
knew he was leaving, that Trevor had been sacked
then recalled, and Woody was gone, happy they
werent. It wasnt fun, says Bolder. It was all
right. We did it, it was fun playing the songs. And

Aynsley Dunbars a great drummer but he wasnt a

Woody Woodmansey.
Throughout the Pin Ups sessions, David was
simultaneously busy dragging on a cigarette and
drinking his usual incessant coffees while spinning
plans for a new musical, Tragic Moments and
bored, sitting apart from the band and reading the
paper while they chatted among themselves. For
all the poignancy of this event, the musicians had a
blast rambling around the Chteau, or catching a
cab into Paris to raid the chicks at the Crazy
Horse Saloon, says Richardson. It was great. It
didnt feel like the ship was sinking from my
perspective, but it obviously was.
If, for David and Defries, Pin Ups derived from
a simple need to deliver more product, the album
itself sealed Bowies status as a phenomenon
rivalled only by The Beatles or Elvis; the album
entered the charts at number one, with its
predecessors sitting nearby at thirteen, nineteen
and twenty-six in the UK, while its standout track,
Sorrow, shipped 147,000 copies before release
in the UK. Although today it sounds obviously

mannered, Bowies voice a self-parody, Pin Ups

humour and carefree charm emphasised Davids
humanity; its simple odes to Mod good-times a
welcome contrast to the intensity of Aladdin Sane.
For all that, contemporary critics like Rolling
Stones Greg Shaw were quick to point out its
weaknesses, citing its lack of edge and Bowies
over-cooked voice concluding, even in 1965, any
of a thousand bands could have done better. At a
time of general nostalgia, with TV-advertised
fifties and sixties compilation albums hogging the
c ha r ts , Pin Ups was an uncharacteristically
predictable move, and even industry friends like
John Peel commented, Ill be glad when Bryan
Ferry and David Bowie get this oldies business out
of their normally diverting systems.
In Bowies string of successes that summer, there
was one minor setback. After abandoning his plan
for the musical Tragic Moments for which hed
recorded a fifteen-minute segment at the Chteau
David switched subjects to George Orwells 1984,
working briefly on a script with Pork director

Tony Ingrassia. Unfortunately, Orwells widow

Sonia was no rock n roll devotee, and when
MainMan approached her for the rights to a show
based on Orwells novel, she refused, describing
the notion as bizarre. Bowie would be forced to
refashion his idea into a more amorphous concept,
but as he and Defries discussed the possibility of
recording a TV show in the hope of finally
achieving his mass-market breakthrough in
America, David decided to feature a couple of the
songs destined for the musical in The 1980 Floor
Show, a one-off special for NBC to be recorded in
October at his old London haunt, the Marquee
Club.
Most of Davids previous projects had benefited
from the adrenalin rush of improvisation that gave
birth to them. It seemed natural to assume The
1980 Floor Show would be the same. Freddie
Buretti crafted the costumes, and Bowie formed a
vocal backing trio, The Astronettes, with Ava,
Geoff MacCormack and Jason Guess, whom
Bowie knew through a friend who owned a soulfood restaurant. Mark Pritchett, whod worked on

the sessions that gave birth to both Hunky Dory

and Ziggy, came in to augment Ronson on guitar.
The new material, notably 1984/Dodo, was
dense and intriguing, but the show itself was a
mess the settings looked cheesy, and the
camerawork uninspired. Even the fans whod been
invited in to make up the audience were mostly
underwhelmed. It was really disappointing,
remembers writer David Thompson, with him
doing the same three songs forty times. For the
musicians, the main highlight was the sight of
Marianne Faithfulls backside, clearly visible in a
perverted nuns costume it was certainly more
pleasing than her singing, in a rather Teutonic
version of Sonny and Chers Ive Got You Babe,
which sees singing partner and, it seemed, lover
Bowie win cing at her frequent bum notes. Ava
Cherry remembers Defries being convinced that
the production was going to give us the juice to go
into America and really be big. If so, he was
wrong. The show was broadcast by NBC on 16
November, with its more intriguing snippets
excised Bowies costume was declared too

provocative, as was the word suicide in Rock

n Roll Suicide and the show, after its initial
broadcast, was then sent to languish in the
archives, seemingly for eternity.
The half-cocked management of The 1980 Floor
Show was typical of MainMans increasing
disorganisation. The main breadwinner, Bowie
himself, had not as yet generated consistent profits
across America, while the European market was,
for some reason, completely overlooked. Although
Iggy had been sacked and Mott, Lou and Annette
Peacock had fled, the MainMan roster continued to
grow amoebically, without any logic. Wayne
County, later to become the celebrated punk
musician Jayne County, was one of many artists
who saw their projects in her case the Live at
the Trucks film and soundtrack abandoned or
confined to the vaults. To this day I hate the man,
she says today of Defries, damn his eyes, damn
his soul. Simon Turner later a cult musician who
recorded for the UKs Creation and Mute labels
was another signing lost in the chaos, while
guitarist Mark Pritchett remembers going to Sarm

Studios in Londons East End to make a complete

album with some exotic South American bird, she
was good, which would prove another expensive,
unrealised MainMan project.
Defries always had a strangely contradictory
attitude towards money, unconcerned about
spending it on ambitious projects, yet pennypinching with smaller amounts. In those autumn
months, there was unrelenting office gossip about
Defries investments in the precious-metals
market, taking advantage of the abolition of
controls on the price of gold. At the time the
stories seemed merely to illustrate his Midas-like
skills of generating even more profits. By
November, Defries had grandly declared that
MainMan was now an International Entertainment
Conglomerate and put into execution his longtreasured scheme of moving his base of operations
to America. Before the years end he had
augmented the original Manhattan apartment with a
loft apartment on the Lower West Side, a
penthouse on the Upper East Side, several
apartments for MainMan artists, and finally his

pice de resistance, a MainMan estate of buildings

in Greenwich, Connecticut. The vacuum of power
this left in London, the location of MainMans
main money-spinner, was initially filled by Hugh
Attwooll, whod been hired as an agent with no
experience whatsoever, and was promoted to
something between office boy, Chief Executive
and money juggler. Most of the income came from
RCA advances, publishing income and PRS
(Performing Rights Society) income, all of which
was generated by David and which then went into
a big tub, says Attwooll. Or, rather a small tub
actually. That was the problem. Attwooll is one of
several MainMan executives who believe Tony
Defries generally gets bad press, which Im not
certain he deserves, but through the course of
1973 it became obvious that the whole thing was
completely nuts.
In the meantime, MainMans only proven source
of income had his own eyes on America, a
destination that would shape his next musical
move, says his accompanist, Mark Pritchett. He
knew it was a multicultural place black,

Hispanic as much as white. And he wanted that

Nile Rodgers, funky type of thing. This American
vibe would inspire Davids last session at Trident,
on 1984/Dodo which would also be his last
with both Ken Scott and Mick Ronson. Within the
first couple of takes, it became fundamentally clear
that all of us but Mick was the lead musician
werent black funky, says Pritchett. This was not
it.
Given time, its possible Ronson and Pritchett
might have mastered the stripped-down funk that
David envisioned. But right back to Space
Oddity, David had become used to having his
ideas put on tape instantaneously. David wants it
now, says Pritchett. Hes not exactly first-take
Dave, but its Cant you hear what I hear? and if
its take number four he gets frustrated: Ill get
someone who can then.
Those Trident sessions marked the end of Mick
Ronsons partnership with Bowie; Mark Pritchett,
whod worked with David since the Arts Lab days,
would be replaced later that year. Pritchetts
departure was hardly noticed, although Micks

would be pored over for years by fans who knew

that Ronson had been a key architect of Ziggy
Stardusts success. But such departures, says
Pritchett who would later be given parting gifts
including Davids Jag and the Hagstrom twelvestring David had used since signing to Ken Pitt
are simply the price of progress. Any musician
that had any kind of contact with David that he
enjoyed, I dare you to name one who would say
that when the parting came they were in any way
discarded like a spent toy. Not me. And not Mick.
Micks own feelings were mixed; he was
nervous of occupying the spotlight, but his own ego
had been stoked up by the MainMan machine,
which finally launched his solo career over the
following months, complete with a promotional
film to publicise his own album, which was
recorded at the Chteau with Trevor Bolder,
Aynsley Dunbar, Pritchett, Scott Richardson and
others, directly after Pin Ups. Pritchetts last
project with David was the sessions that David
booked that autumn, when he used Olympic Studios
in Barnes best-known for its Rolling Stones

connection almost as a demo studio.

This would be a creative period for David,
although his activity was not confined to music, for
Ava Cherry remembers him staying up for fortyeight hours learning how to work a video machine,
or reading fifty books at a time about one subject,
stacking them up and reading them for days. The
Astronettes, his backing group from The 1980
Floor Show, were just one of his musical projects,
inspiring new songs including I am a Lazer and I
am Divine later reworked as Scream Like a
Baby and Somebody Up There Likes Me. Those
sessions were later abandoned, for Jason Guesss
bland, wavery vocals were hopelessly inadequate,
but they served their purpose as David was
working out how to do a soul thing, says Cherry.
They would become part of a host of sessions
conducted at Olympic, as David developed new
working methods. Youd get a call, turn up, it
might be just you and a drummer, it might just be
you laying down something on your own, David
would say, These are the chords, can you give it a
funky feel? He may use your part, he may decide

he doesnt like it, or he might use the idea as part

of something else, says Mark Pritchett.
This cut-and-paste approach rather than the
organised, succinct sessions overseen by Mick
Ronson would become a hallmark of Davids
post-Spiders style. Soon he adopted a similar
approach to writing lyrics, inspired by William
Burroughs, whom he met on 17 November for a
Rolling Stone feature. Writer Craig Copetas
bought him all of Burroughs books none of
which hed properly read, despite later claims to
have discovered the writer as a teenager and
David instantly adapted Burroughs cut-up
technique on songs like Sweet Thing/Candidate,
writing a paragraph of text, then cutting it up into
four- or five-word sections and shuffling them.
Celebrity encounters arranged for magazines are
notoriously unenlightening, but the Rolling Stone
set piece provided a perfect portrait of Bowie at
his apogee in London. Copetas noted the contrast
between the humble minimalism of Burroughs
Piccadilly flat and Bowies materialism, recording
the extravagance of Bowies new rock-star house

and his coterie of attendants, who dispensed

avocados stuffed with shrimp and bottles of
Beaujolais Nouveau. The contrast in their
intellectual approach was stark, too, with
Burroughs outlook formed by books he was
surprised to hear that Bowie had never read T. S.
Eliot and Bowies from people, like Lindsay
Kemp, Chimi Rimpoche and the cast of Pork.
Nonetheless, there was an obvious rapport, Bowie
hopping from Andy Warhol to Cuban musician Joe
Cuba like a gadfly, or listening intently as
Burroughs rapped about orgone accumulators and
infrasound.
David camps it up impressively for Burroughs,
discoursing on tribalism and the sex life of kids, in
his vitality and enthusiasm he is still recognisably
the same teenager who talked about poetry and art
when making his unsuccessful debut album. And he
exhibits exactly the same competitiveness, allying
himself subtly with Mick Jagger, delighting in
deconstructing him as a white boy from Dagenham
trying his damndest to be ethnic.
Marking his ascent from being a curiosity from

Beckenham to a fully fledged rock star, David and

Angie had left Haddon Hall in the summer, moving
briefly to Maida Vale before installing themselves
in the customary rock hangout of Chelsea, at 89,
Oakley Street, not far from Jaggers Cheyne Walk
home. Freddie Buretti and Daniella Parmar
occupied the basement of the four-storey, flatfronted 1850s house; Ava Cherry, after a month at
Oakley Street which was long enough to outstay
Angies welcome moved into Daska House, an
apartment building one hundred yards up the
Kings Road. Various Beckenham artists reworked
the house as a model of rock-star chic: stairs
painted alternately matt and gloss black, a hallway
lit by car headlamps, a sunken double bed, airbrushed murals in most of the rooms a sun rise,
based on the Sun Pat peanut butter logo for David,
a tropical beach scene for Zowies room on the top
floor, alongside the office. The living room was in
white shagpile, dominated by one of George
Underwoods paintings and a larger Dali-style
work. The sunken central area was surrounded by
scatter cushions, with a spherical TV, a state-of-

the-art video machine and Polaroids of exotic

activities, remembers airbrush artist Mick Gillah.
Towards the end of 1973, this sleek, busy
household seemed an epitome of domestic bliss, a
glossier version of the Haddon Hall ethos. David
was once more enthused by his work, occasionally
treating visitors to sights of lyrics hed cut and
pasted together from his more bizarre fan letters.
Generally busy with her own projects or shopping
trips, Angie still operated as a domestic goddess,
treating guests to an impeccably turned-out souffl
or quiche. Zowie was now an out-going two-yearold: dressed in brightly coloured dungarees, with
long blond hair, hed scamper around the house
singing songs hed made up. Only granny was
missing from this idyllic scene although visitors
to her flat on Albermarle Street remember Peggy
being devoted to Zowie, she was seldom, if ever,
seen at Oakley Street, and never featured in
Davids conversation. Instead, Tony Defries was
Davids only father figure.
Defries absence in America was the only
disquieting element in Davids domestic life.

Musicians, producers, girlfriends could be

discarded; Defries inspirational visions, his
insights, were irreplaceable. It could be anything:
business, what people to see, girlfriends, Tony
would orchestrate it all, says Ava Cherry.
At the summit of his career released from the
live treadmill, finally ranked alongside his teenage
idols the close of 1973 should have been a time
for David to savour his own success and freedom.
Finally, he was given time to relax; fatefully, he
was also given time to doubt. And once hed
opened himself up to them, those doubts intensified
remarkably quickly. The impact on the psyche of a
man who saw himself almost as Defries son was
predictable. Devastation is the word, says
Cherry, his closest companion over this period.
They were great days, till Tony messed Davids
head up really messed him up.

12
The Changing isnt Free
Cocaine is a cruel drug. It makes people
behave like absolute bastards.
Keith Christmas

As 1973 drew to a close, with David Bowie in

London and Tony Defries in New York, both men
basked in their achievements. They had finally
beaten the system. But neither of them could wait
to join it.
Defries, the man who had derided old-school,
bloated record company management, was building
an over-staffed empire that mirrored the system he
despised. And David, who had constructed a
manifesto that positioned him as a new species of
human, couldnt wait to become chums with the

previous generation of rock stars. Each of them

spotted the contradictions in the others position,
but not their own. They were a really solid team
up to that point, says Tony Zanetta, who respected
worshipped, even both men. But once
everything stopped and they could enjoy the fruits
of success, the cracks started to appear.
Those cracks would fail to damage Defries
serene sense of self-worth; David Bowie,
however, could hardly bear to contemplate them,
burying his worries so deep that the inevitable
crisis would be utterly devastating.
In the meantime, David cast around for role
models. Iggy and Lou no longer sufficed; instead he
increased his focus on their apparent antithesis,
Mick Jagger. Mick was always a rival, rather than
an idol. Determined to topple Jagger from his
pedestal, David was also fascinated by him to the
point of obsession. He and Ava enjoyed several
dinners with Mick and Bianca, chatting volubly,
with the pair even noodling on a tune together one
night, which became the Astronettes song Having

a Good Time. But neither one could quite discard

their elegant, sophisticated personas. It was
polite, intellectual but there was a line they
didnt cross, says Cherry. In later years, Angie
Bowie described how shed caught Bowie and
Mick in bed together, which is ludicrous to anyone
who saw the two together. Each man was guarded,
and even twenty years later would be almost
excessively conscious of his relative standing; the
notion that one would be completely open with the
other, let alone to be a bottom was unthinkable.
To Ava, the two personalities seemed similar;
bright, competitive, with a similar dry or camp
humour, but in reality they were very different.
David was always in the grip of some obsession,
or enthusiasm. Mick wasnt. He was never under
the spell of anything, says Maggie Abbott, later
the movie agent for both Mick and David. He was
always totally under control. He was a typical Leo,
much more disciplined than David. He would
never be taken in by anything.
Although David acted otherwise, he was
intimidated by his rival, who was an old hand at

managing pretenders to his throne. Jagger had led

the way for so many of Davids obsessions, from
recruiting
the
coolest
African-American
girlfriends, like Marsha Hunt, to writing lyrics in a
Burroughsian cut-up style, as Mick had done for
Exile on Main Street, back in 1971. Yet at a
Rolling Stones show in Newcastle that spring, it
finally dawned on Bowie that he was in a position
to top the Stones singer. Standing in the wings, he
was telling confidant Scott Richardson about the
time hed offered to carry Brian Jones guitar and
been told to piss off. Suddenly, the pair noticed
that Jagger was glaring at them from centre stage.
Glancing behind, they realised hundreds of fans
were ignoring the band, craning their necks to see
the carrot-haired presence at the side of the stage.
David and Scott accompanied Jagger and
Bianca to a casino that evening, where Scott
noticed that Jagger was fascinated by his rival.
Thereafter Jagger would stay in regular touch,
keeping tabs on David, who relished the accolade
but also found his competitive instincts
reawoken. Until now, he had measured himself

against Marc Bolan, who had never made an

impact in the States, and whose appeal in Britain
would wane that autumn, prompting Marcs final
split with Tony Visconti. Jagger would be an
altogether more challenging friend and rival.
As was his habit, David approached the task of
measuring up to Jagger by moving directly on to
his turf, liberally appropriating from him. This
helped inspire his choice of Olympic as his
working studio, along with Keith Harwood, at that
time the Stones favourite engineer. While the
lyrical core of Davids next album would be a
reworking of his 1984 concept, its chaotic,
dystopian edge intensified by his use of Burroughs
cut-up technique, the musical blueprint was
unashamedly based on The Rolling Stones.
The core of the album was completed within a
few frenzied days at Olympic, according to bassist
Herbie Flowers and guitarist Alan Parker,
seasoned session men who together made up the
UK soul band, Blue Mink. The pair were well
used to having their melodic ideas become the
basis of someone elses song Serge

Gainsbourgs superb Melody Nelson album, for

instance, on which they took almost total
responsibility for the music, uncredited. That was
part of what we did, says Parker, so on highprofile sessions we would simply double the fee.
For the album that would became Diamond
Dogs, the principal songs were well organised,
with five or six backing tracks laid down in
roughly three or four days. Parker and Flowers
both remember the development of what would
become the albums best-known song, Rebel
Rebel, for David introduced it quite specifically.
I want it to sound like the Stones, he told them,
before showing them the song, borrowing Parkers
black Les Paul. Bowies riff was uptempo,
Stonesy, but it needed honing; Parker picked the
main notes out clearly, adding a particular chord
shape, rather than the original single note, just
before the chord change, and a distinctive
beeeoonng in the last line of the chorus, just as
David sings the line I love you so.
David played the riff to Alan, Alan made sure it
was good enough to record, and then [Alan] played

it, says Herbie Flowers, who remembers the

electric guitar, bass and drums laying down the
backing track simultaneously which accounted
for the loose feel, with the song speeding up as
Aynsley Dunbar launches into his stomping, onbeat drum pattern, which consciously evokes the
Stones Satisfaction.
A gloriously simple song which marked his
farewell to the Ziggy era, Rebel Rebel would
become one of Bowies best-known singles. But
Parker was shocked when, a few years later, he
realised that, beyond writing the riff, Bowie was
credited in the album notes with playing the guitar
on the finished version. It would be nigh-on
impossible for the most skilled guitarist to replace
Parkers work, because of the changing tempo and
the sonic spill between the studio microphones. I
can tell my own playing, and my own sound, says
Parker, and I know its me.
The emphasis on Davids role as guitarist
seemed calculated to show Mick Ronson whose
solo career was flourishing, briefly how well
David could manage without him. Its silly I

dont know why it would matter so much, says

Parker, whod chatted with both Ronson and
Bowie at previous sessions. The confusion over
the credits was all the more pointless, considering
the superb job David did of playing guitar on the
remaining songs, notably the title track which
with its cowbell and loose backing vocals echoed
Honky Tonk Women and the jagged, New
Wave-ish guitar on Candidate.
Look more closely, though, and the pettiness
was more easily explained, for in the closing
months of 1973, Davids world was falling in on
him. At the beginning of the sessions, he was
relatively optimistic, fired up by the challenge of
learning the electric guitar, and enjoying the
camaraderie of the studio, dropping in on Mott
guitarist Mick Ralphs new band, Bad Company,
who were mixing at Olympic. But that camaraderie
was splintered when Bowie was barred from the
studio after an argument; by the end of the sessions
there was precious little good will remaining.
Davids musical isolation, his dependence on
session men yes-men, really had its upside,

bringing a new intensity to his work. Yet outside

the studio, his isolation was corrosive, worsened
by the growing chaos and back-biting within
MainMan. After Tony Defries departure for New
York, MainMans cashflow problems took a
dramatic turn for the worse. One of the companys
recent recruits, Corinne Schwab, did a heroic job
of controlling the companys UK finances, but even
she failed to talk the Chteau DHrouville out of
banning all MainMans acts in a dispute over
unpaid bills. In January 1974, Olympic followed
suit. Meanwhile, tales filtered back of the
profligacy of MainMan New York, where staff had
their own credit cards and had limos on call. One
by one, people were telling us what was
happening, says Ava Cherry. Eventually the truth
of the matter was the company was spending
money like water, while David couldnt get any
ready cash.
As the suspicion that Tony Defries, the father
figure who controlled so much of his life, was
presiding over a financial meltdown grew, David
found the perfect psychological crutch, one that had

contributed to the air of glamour and decadence

that surrounded the Rolling Stones: cocaine.
Its fitting that cocaine would reach its height as
the last vestiges of the we decade were
destroyed and the me decade took over.
Considered at the time as a safe, non-addictive
substance We thought it helped us be smarter
and more creative, says MainMans Tony Zanetta
cocaine would ravage the psyche of a generation
of musicians. New Stones guitarist Ron Wood, and
Iggy, would be just two of its victims; Iggy would
later be sent to a mental institution as a result.
Guitarist Keith Christmas, whod been part of the
optimistic, co-operative Beckenham scene, saw the
drugs effects on David and many others, and
shudders as he recalls them. Its a cruel drug. It
makes people behave like complete bastards.
Because it takes away a lot of the fearful emotional
need we have not to upset other people it allows
you to feel you can upset whoever the fuck you
please. I found sometimes at a party, people would
be having a good time, then someone would

mention coke and the whole party would change

completely. Get some coke in, get some lines in,
would be all people could talk about. The
compulsive quality of it is horrifying.
Although a compulsive consumer of coffee and
cigarettes, David had been almost virtuous in his
avoidance of other drugs. It was so peculiar, says
Tony Zanetta, he didnt smoke pot, hed simply
drink a couple of glasses of white wine. It was so
fast cocaine was definitely something he
incorporated into what a rock star should be.
Ava Cherry remembers Davids occasional
toot as overlapping with the apparent financial
crisis. He was in a dark place saying these
people have taken all my money. And at the first
stage [cocaine] would be a crutch: It calms me
down. Angie, too, dates Davids obsession with
cocaine as starting from these weeks. Its what
they did to him, my boy, she laments in a rare
outbreak of sympathy, also blaming the drug for the
breakdown of their marriage.
Davids mental state would also have an
obvious effect on his music. Although some of

Diamond Dogs songs were languid and melodic

Sweet Thing/Candidate there was an obsessive
quality about the recording, with jagged guitars and
saxophones layered ominously on each other. The
lyrical imagery, too, was dark, its stories of the
Diamond Dogs drawn from Haywood Jones
stories of Dickensian London, when orphan kids
crowded the rooftops of the London rookeries. The
resulting intensity marked a distinct sonic and
spiritual departure from the optimism of his three
albums with The Spiders. This new territory was
fertile, and marked a progression in Davids work,
but there was a sacrifice too; in the obsessive
regard to sound, texture, an almost physical
heaviness, the deftness of Hunky Dory and Ziggy
Stardust with their swooping melodies and
restlessly mobile chord sequences had gone.
The break with the past was crystallised when
Trevor Bolder, whod been working with Mick
Ronson on the guitarists solo album and tour,
answered the phone late one night.
Oi, Trev! his ex-singer greeted him. What are
you doing?

Im doing nowt, Bolder responded.

Do you want to come and play on a song?
Bolder agreed, and turned up at Barnes to find
Bowie, Mike Garson and drummer Tony Newman
working on a slow acoustic number. It was an
uncomfortable experience, sitting in the studio with
Bowie but no Spiders. The quartet ran through the
song several times before running tape. But it was
a nothing song, says Bolder, and it obviously got
dumped later. The take complete, Bolder packed
away his bass guitar, while Bowie sat with his
back to him.
Im off now Dave, Ill see you later on, said
Bolder. Bowie didnt say a word. Bolder repeated
himself. Im going, then. See you! Bye. Again,
Bowie ignored him. The ex-Spider walked out of
the studio, in silence, taking a last look at Bowies
back, silhouetted against the control-room
window. It was the last time they would share a
studio.
During the same period, Bowies teenage friend
Wayne Bardell bumped into him in Tramps
nightclub. Overjoyed to see his friend, whom hed

last talked to during the first Ziggy tour, he walked

up to him.
Hi, how are you?
Hi. Who are you? was Davids response.
That hurt, says Bardell, who had sat in on the
recording of Pity the Fool, and seen David
regularly over the last nine years. I was taking
cocaine too but it didnt stop me knowing
people. This was cold. Calculated.
The freezing out of those whod known him from
his days as a struggling musician was conventional
behaviour for the 1970s Marc Bolan exhibited a
nastier version of the trait, again bolstered by
cocaine use. David wasnt nasty; he would simply
cut people off, coldly. With those still in favour, he
was considerate and thoughtful: after hearing from
Tony Visconti that the home studio he was building
was short of furniture, he sent around a Conran
Shop van packed with office chairs, plus a dining
suite and crockery later theyd mix the bulk of the
Diamond Dogs tracks there.
There had always been a child-like element to
Davids persona that clear-eyed earnestness was

an intrinsic part of his charm. Yet that childishness

was not so charming once it was distorted by the
flattery of minor MainMan staff, the constant
attentions of cooks or maids, and the other
corrosive effects of celebrity. As Ava Cherry
remembers, Children think the whole world
revolves round them. And thats the way David
was encouraged to think, by everyone. Certain
friends would learn to manage Davids moods;
notably Ron Wood, whom David knew from his
Marquee days. David renewed his friendship with
the guitarist once the Diamond Dogs sessions
moved to Hilversum, in the Netherlands, where the
Stones were also working. The two bonded over a
mutual love of Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore,
memorising and replicating their dialogues. Ronny
was very good at making you feel that you were
having fun, says Ava Cherry, and I always felt
good when Ronny was coming over. Because
David wasnt angry then hed always be
laughing.
David built up a deeper, more enduring
relationship over that same period. Corinne Coco

Schwab had been hired by Hugh Attwooll in the

summer of 1973. MainMans UK office manager
thought her well educated, intelligent and capable.
He soon discovered she was smarter than me,
thats for sure. I hired her and within a month I was
gone and she had my job. By the autumn of
1973, Corinne was the only person keeping the
MainMan UK office afloat, for by then the
financial situation was intolerable says Tony
Zanetta: She was abandoned in the English office,
Defries refused to pay almost any bills, David was
spending wildly. She certainly earned her
position.
Defries liked Cocos old-school efficiency, her
command of languages and her cosmopolitan
background; born, she told her friends, during her
mothers shopping trip to Bloomingdales, New
York, she had been educated in America, Europe
and Kashmir. Defries initially encouraged her rise,
in order to diminish Angies influence. By the
autumn of 1973, Coco had become Davids
personal assistant (a job Suzi Fussey turned down,
eventually to marry Mick Ronson) and was

installed in the top floor of Oakley Street, where

she controlled access to David.
Corinne would become a central character in
Davids life: intelligent, slim, witty, she seemed in
other respects almost anonymous. This was part of
her charm, and her effectiveness. She was happy to
devote herself utterly to David and seemed to have
no agenda of her own to impose on him. Many
years later David would sing of your soothing
hand that turned me round in his song devoted to
Coco, Never Let Me Down. The song speaks of
her as a lover, but in reality her role was more
complex, like a combination mother, sister, lover
and most crucially all-purpose intellectual
confidante, rather like the paid companions hired
by refined ladies of a certain age. David liked her
because she was intellectual and they could have
good conversations, says Ava Cherry, who also
points out that Corinne was in love with [David]
from day one. David savoured Corinnes utter
devotion to his cause, and would occasionally
taunt Ava with stories of how indispensible shed
made herself. In February, Ava was sent over to

New York, ostensibly to link up with Tony Defries

and prepare Davids move to the city, but Cherry
soon concluded that Schwab systematically did
nothing but try and get me out.
In Avas absence, David turned to another
exotic creature: Amanda Lear. The one-time muse
of Bryan Ferry and acquaintance of Salvador Dali,
Lear helped celebrate Davids twenty-seventh
birthday by taking him to see Fritz Langs 1926
masterpiece Metropolis. In the weeks before he
left for America, David immersed himself in
Langs work, which along with the staging hed
first planned for Arnold Corns started to form the
basis of the imagery for his next American tour.
From 1971 on, hed dreamed of presenting his
shows as a three-dimensional spectacle. Now he
planned a new, grandiose vision, without any
compromises.
David arrived in New York on 1 April, 1974,
sailing the Atlantic with Geoff MacCormack on the
SS France. The one-way journey was laden with
symbolism, both positive and negative; David

intended to base himself in America, a country

hed long dreamed about, to soak up its vibe and
conquer it. And he needed to sort out his problems,
in the form of Tony Defries.
As far as soaking up the vibe, the move to New
York was perfect. After moving in to the Sherry
Netherland Hotel by Central Park, Bowie used
Ava Cherry as his guide to the soul scene. Ava
suggested they check out Harlems Apollo Theater,
where it turned out there was a show on the 26th
topped by Richard Pryor, featuring The Main
Ingredient: one of RCAs few cool bands, the
Harlem outfit had changed line-up in 1972,
recruiting new singer, Cuba Gooding Sr, and
scored a huge soul smash with Everybody Plays
the Fool. The Apollos audience was
overwhelmingly black, with the red-haired, pastyfaced Bowie sticking out like a white cat in a coal
scuttle. He loved it, says Ava. He soaked all of
it up.
There was another joyful source of Americana
to be explored in 1974, in the charismatic form of
Norman Fisher, a stockbroker turned art collector,

famous for the lavish parties hed throw in his tiny

Downtown apartment. David remembers them as
the most diverse soirees in the whole of New
York. People from every sector of the so and not
so avant-garde would flock there Norman was a
magnet. Fisher turned David on to the most
gloriously eclectic art and music: Florence
Jenkins, the famously inept opera singer who
attracted huge audiences in the 1920s, drawn by
her ludicrous costumes and atonal performances,
was one typical example. As well as good
company, Norman also supplied cocaine for his
social circle. [But] he did not want to, says Ava.
Norman just wanted to be friends and hang with
people.
Fisher remained a close friend of Davids for
years, and epitomised the glamour of New York.
But in his role as Davids supplier, he unwittingly
contributed to a profound transformation. I saw
David at the NBC Special [in October 1973] and
didnt see any cocaine problem, says Tony
Zanetta. Then in April 1974, there it was: fullblown.

Davids obviously transformed state would be

yet another factor in the breakdown of his
relationship with Tony Defries. David thought that
moving closer to Defries would invigorate their
relationship; instead, they became more estranged.
Diamond Dogs won mixed reviews on its release
in April 1974, but was Davids best-performing
album in the US to date, peaking at number five.
Defries, however, preferred more showbiz
concepts, like Ziggy Stardust, and the concise
songs it contained. Furthermore, he considered
Davids nascent plans for his next, grandiose tour
with disapproval.
This was typical inconsistency from a man
overseeing a company that now employed twentyfive full-time staff and had its own travel agency,
plus a TV, radio and movie production company. It
was all the more galling to David, considering
how Defries loved to boast of his own largesse,
such as his scheme to fulfil his staff members
ultimate fantasy. (Leee Childers had his teeth
done; Cherry Vanillas bonus was spent on a boob
job.)

As ever, Defries generosity did not stretch to

Davids musicians. In his first weeks in New
York, David had arranged a recording session with
Lulu, calling in Main Ingredient founder Tony
Silvester to help. Silvester suggested his new
guitarist, Carlos Alomar. One-time member of the
Apollo house band and a session regular for
everyone from Peter, Paul and Mary to Roy Ayers,
Carlos Alomar turned up at RCA studios and was
struck by Bowies red hair, and mousey skin. It
was so translucent. And the black under his eyes
was somewhat alarming. After the session Alomar
invited David over to his house in Queens for a
decent meal and was impressed when the singer
actually turned up, spending the evening talking
about soul records, and quizzing Alomar on his
work with Chuck Berry and James Brown. Hes
always surprised me like that hes willing to go
right in.
That evening David asked Carlos to join for his
forthcoming tour and, thrilled at the prospect of
leaving behind the chitlin mentality
represented by notoriously cheapskate employers

like James Brown or Chuck Berry Carlos found

himself a white manager to negotiate the deal. Only
then did Carlos discover that MainMan would only
pay half of the weekly $800 he was getting from
The Main Ingredient. Regretfully, he returned to his
session work and left David to find some cheaper
musicians.
In his quest for a new band, David phoned Keith
Christmas, whod played acoustic guitar back on
the Space Oddity album. A virtuoso musician, with
a distinctly English folk style, Christmas was out
of place in Bowies new surroundings. Arriving in
New York he found David surrounded by a punch
of pretentious fucking posers, so full of themselves
with their dyed white hair and shaven heads. There
was something distinctly sleazy and unpleasant
about it.
The audition itself was a non-event Christmas
was an acoustic guitarist, and his playing on the
electric was barely competent but the
surroundings were bizarre: the cavernous RCA
studios on the Avenue of the Americas, empty but
for Bowie, Christmas and an engineer rolling tape.

Whenever David wanted a toot he would beckon

Christmas down the corridor, to huddle together
furtively in the toilets. So this is all strangely
paranoid. Ill never forget he had this double-sided
razor blade with which hes chopping out lines.
When he stuck his finger on a little bindle of coke
and held it up to my nose I saw how much his hand
was shaking; and the meaning was, I want this stuff
so much, I will risk severe personal injury for it.
The experience was disturbing. Yet, behind the
paranoid, scary facade, Christmas believes, on
reflection, this was exactly the same person hed
known in 1969. David actually seemed like he
was completely in his element. It was a
continuation of the Art Lab days in terms of who he
was as a person; the people had changed, the drugs
might have changed. But the actual person might
not have changed at all. In Beckenham, David
asked Christmas to embrace his hippie trip, just as
he asked Bob Grace to join the sexually
ambivalent Sombrero scene. The furtive ritual of
sniffing cocaine in a toilet was a new trip, for a
new persona; but it was not a persona he would lay

aside so easily.
Within the first few days of arriving in New York,
David contacted an old friend of Ossie Clark,
Michael Kamen another talented, transplanted
Brit with a hefty coke habit with whom David hung
out. Kamen ran a rock n roll band with sax player
David Sanborn and recently recruited guitarist Earl
Slick, but was also a formidably trained classical
musician. Kamen had recently written the music for
a ballet based on the life of Auguste Rodin; Bowie
and MacCormack attended the New York premiere
and were transfixed. Kamens cross-cultural
connections echoed Davids own ideas on dance
and staging, and the composer was engaged as
musical director.
The grandiose staging for Davids new show,
novel as it seemed, was in fact based on ideas hed
toyed with since May, 1971. When constructing
fantasies of how to present Arnold Corns, hed
imagined the band playing in an open-sided boxing
ring, surrounded by huge pillars, each of which
supported a single white spot: Remorseless, it has

to be, he told a bemused Freddie Buretti. I dont

want any colours, I want it all stark. Later, his
ideas for the Rainbow shows were restricted by
budget and time; now he raided MainMans fastdwindling coffers to realise his fantasies. A huge
stage backdrop represented Hunger City, a
decaying future metropolis, with thirty-foot-high
skyscrapers, augmented by a motorised bridge, a
remote-control mirrored module, and a cherrypicker in which David would descend from the
heavens. For Rebel Rebel, Bowie would
perform in the boxing ring, with a couple of
oversized leather boxing gloves; even the mask he
used harked back to the mime hed filmed for Ken
Pitt.
For many fans, the remodelling of David himself
was far more dramatic than the new, mechanised
backdrop. He had arrived in New York with his
spiky carrot-top essentially intact; now it was
consigned to history, in favour of a forties-style
do, with parting and floppy fringe, while the
Yamamoto outfits were ditched for a doublebreasted suit with high-waisted trousers, a skinny

jumper and braces. The style was obviously

influenced by 1940s Harlem, as well as Sinatra,
another hero. Yet in essence Davids consciously
cool image came from closer to home, namely
Roxy Musics Bryan Ferry, whose stage
movements he studied closely; David practised
Bryans gestures, including a distinctive movement
which the Roxy singer made with his index finger,
and incorporated the wiggle into his own
repertoire of stage mannerisms.
When the tour opened in Canada on 14 June
less than a year after Bowies retirement the
sight of goggle-eyed Ziggy clones aghast at
Davids new earthly manifestation, and
overwhelmed by the visual smorgasbord which
included loose street dancing, choreographed by
Toni Basil was a vindication of the weeks of
preparation. Yet there was chaos with the
equipment which meant David was in constant
danger of electrocution. The set blended
conservatism an emphasis on the hits, and some
self-consciously bombastic arrangements with
subtlety and risk; The Jean Genies verse was

turned into an urban rap, like Lous Walk on the

Wild Side, while The Ohio Players Here Today
and Gone Tomorrow, delivered at later shows,
was delivered straight, show-casing the soul pipes
David had been developing ever since Pity the
Fool. Old-school session hands Herbie Flower
and Tony Newman ensured the rhythms were slick
and relentless; the show rocked real hard, as
Detroiter Robert Matheu, a veteran of shows by the
MC5 and Stooges, remembered.
Yet the first run of shows, the product of such
intense work and obsessiveness, would become
famous as a beacon of cynicism, thanks to the illwill surrounding the recording of the Philadelphia
shows between 8 and 12 July. Bassist Herbie
Flowers was the prime mover in a threatened
strike by the musicians who arrived at the venue
and noticed extra microphones: these were the first
indication theyd received that MainMan intended
to release an album of the nights performance,
without paying any extra fees. Guitarist Earl Slick
recalls benefiting from Flowers staunch
performance as a shop steward in a stand-up row

between MainMan and the musicians. Today,

Flowers insists the row was blown up out of all
proportion. We did ask, Do we get any money?
and we were told we would get the American
Musicians Union rate. Only a trace of disdain
remains in his remark about the tours staging.
Ive always liked opera, he remarks. But this
was pantomime.
John Peel, Davids old champion, was less
generous in his assessment of Davids prosaic
cover of Knock on Wood, which trailed the live
album in September, proclaiming it lazy, arrogant
and impertinent. The same would apply to the
David Live album when it followed in October:
despite many creative moments, the performances
were bombastic, sounding like the output of a
leviathan corporation, rather than a singer. Still, it
would be one of Davids most successful US
releases to date, peaking at number eight; in the
UK, it was held off the top slot by the Bay City
Rollers. Many early Bowie uptakers, the people
whod first championed Bowie in the press or
looked him out at tiny clubs like Friars Aylesbury

saw it as mere filler, a sign of a creative drought.

Yet within a few months, theyd be forced to
rethink.
From the moment hed seen The Main Ingredient
back in April, David had embarked on an
obsessive exploration of cutting edge R&B, which
soon extended beyond the obligatory Aretha
Franklin to boxes of soul vinyl obtained for him by
LA writer Harvey Kubernick, including Philly
International singles by Harold Melvin and the
Bluenotes and Patti Labelle, and MFSB, the Philly
soul band who recorded the theme tune to Soul
Train. David watched the celebrated music show
every week, usually in a party atmosphere, along
with fellow soul obsessives like Geoff
MacCormack. Part of Davids fascination with
Ava Cherry was the fact that she epitomised US
soul culture. As with so many of his confidantes,
he pumped her for information, all of which fed
into his life and work. My dad was a musician in
the forties [in Chicago] black guys used to wear
baggy pants and they called them gousters. I told
David once, My dad has got a couple of pairs of

ties and suits. He was, Really? Where? Can you

bring some over? So I ended up bringing over a
couple of my dads silk ties and a pair of gouster
pants that had suspenders [braces] on them.
Many of Davids previous stylistic swerves had
taken months of preparation; manifestos worked
out at Haddon Hall, musicians persuaded down
from far-flung spots like Hull. In America, things
could move more quickly. The new line-up of
musicians took a single phone call. The new look
was based on a pair of pants. David put on his
gouster outfit, with silk ties and suspenders, and
then told his girlfriend, Im going to record a
session now.

13
Make Me Break Down and Cry
This was so fast. When it came time to
do a song we were like, Cool, lets go!
Boom, boom, boom!
Carlos Alomar

During a brief stopover in New York, David

phoned Carlos Alomar, the guitarist hed met back
in Queens but been unable to hire, thanks to
MainMans stinginess. Look, Carlos, he told him,
Im going to be coming to Philadelphia, to Sigma
Sound. He employed a persuasiveness honed over
years of working with musicians. I know youve
just finished working there and I really want you to
come down. The guitarist appreciated Davids
charm, but needed little persuasion to leave the

chitlin circuit, once hed established David would

match his existing salary.
Born in 1951 in Puerto Rico, and brought up in
New York, Alomar had worked relentlessly
applying what he calls due diligence to both his
music and his schoolwork ever since his father, a
minister on 109th Street, died when Carlos was
just fourteen. Being fined by James Brown (for
missing his hit me cue), or hanging out with
Chuck Berry rock n roll poet and notorious
skinflint helped shape Alomars Buddha-like
calm but cutting-contest competitive persona.
Alomar brought his wife, session singer Robin
Clarke, to the sessions at Sigma Sound in
Philadelphia; together with their friend Luther
Vandross, the couple were probably the key
influence in the genesis of what would become
Young Americans They glued it all together, as
Ava Cherry remembers. Carlos was very eventempered, never got mad; and he made David feel
he could bridge the gap between soul and where he
was.
Tony Visconti, called back for a proper

production job at last after a brief reunion with

David, to mix Diamond Dogs and David Live, was
overjoyed to be back in the creative pressure
cooker. But he was worried about the singers
obviously fragile state. When the pair discussed
his condition, David assured him he was fine.
And I kind of believed him. In retrospect, says
Visconti, its hard to know exactly why, but I did.
Whereas Phil Lynott told me much the same thing
and I didnt. But Viscontis souvenir photo of
David at the Sigma Sound desk shows him as
skeletal, his skin grey and papery. As one of those
in the studio with him remarks today, David must
have had an angel watching over him. That photo
says it all but in person, it was even more
horrible.
Inside the cocooning safety of Sigma Sound a
studio hed first tried out with Ava Cherry, on 9
July David was in his element. The basic routine
was established from the first day, recognisable as
the same routine from his first album with
Visconti: David would strum through the song on
guitar or piano, the musicians would pick it up and

go for a take after a few run-throughs. But this time

he dictated the feel he wanted, insisting that he lay
the vocals down live along with the backing track;
Visconti set up a dual microphone array to cut out
some of the instrumental spill onto the vocal track
and the tapes rolled. But this was fast, says
Alomar, Remember, I brought most of the band so
when it came time to do a song we were like,
Cool lets go. Boom boom boom. Our music was
out in a week and he was like, Holy shit! These
sessions were going so hard and so fast.
In a blitz of recording, the title track, Young
Americans, was first to go down, on the first day;
in essence, the song comprised a succession of
TV-style images, from Nixons resignation
announced just three days earlier on the 8th to
Afro Sheen, the hair-care product whose adverts
bookended Soul Train. The songs story of a
newly married couple echoes Bowies own
planned seduction of America: like Oh! You
Pretty Things, the song name-checks its audience.
Its impossible to miss the musical change
signalled by Young Americans, but the songs

lyrics are just as emblematic of his magpie

tendencies. A complete about-face from Diamond
Dogs fractured imagery, Young Americans is
observational musical reportage that even
includes dialogue: They pulled in just behind the
bridge. He lays her down, he frowns, Gee my
lifes a funny thing . The backing might have
been funky, but the lyrical style was a straight lift
from Bruce Springsteen, whom David and Geoff
had seen back at Maxs. To make the homage even
more specific, David had laid down a cover of
Bruces Its Hard to Be a Saint in the City, which
he delivered in his new, baritone croon, a kind of
cross between Elvis, Sinatra and Bryan Ferry.
During the session, Tony Visconti discovered
Bruce lived nearby in a caravan, he remembers
and they invited the New Jersey singer down to the
studio. Bruce was puzzled, confused that this
English glam singer was covering one of his songs
and praising him so extravagantly; in the end
Davids enthusiasm won him over, and they talked
about music late into the night.
Although on many other songs the soul element

was low-key and understated, the title track of

Young Americans was self-consciously funky, a
statement of intent. Exactly as he had done with
Ziggy, David was repositioning the brand, as Dai
Davies put it. But the move was intuitive, not
calculated, says Ava Cherry. He was so happy
doing this it was simply living out what he
wanted to be, living out a dream.
Several tracks from those sessions illustrated
that Bowies love for the music he was channelling
was deep and heartfelt, notably the astonishing
Its Gonna Be Me. Its a gloriously stark, slow
eight-bar blues, backdropped by Mike Garsons
minimal piano. David cajoles, sketching out image
after image of regret and his own sexual addiction.
His voice is breathy, pitch-perfect Aretha meets
Judy Garland in one of the most accomplished
vocal performances he would ever commit to tape.
Can You Hear Me?, recorded in the same early
sessions, is equally subtle, the final mix benefiting
from a typically haunting Visconti string
arrangement. Win, started but not completed at
Sigma Sound, is an almost spiritual meditation

which represents a neat antithesis to the white

mans conventional take on R&B. Where Surrey
bluesmen like Eric Clapton expressed a fauxempathy with the downtrodden, David Bowie uses
soul to celebrate success: All you got to do is win
thats all ya gotta do.
In the coming months, many critics, notably
Creems Lester Bangs, would tear into Bowies
assimilation of R&B; it was brazen, unashamed.
Yet Bowies unapologetic overnight makeover
was a triumph compared to his friend and rival,
Marc Bolan. Influenced by girlfriend Gloria Jones,
Marc had dabbled with R&B for over a year, even
playing with Ike and Tina Turner on the B-side to
Nutbush City Limits. But Bolan could not bear to
totally abandon his trademark style; his R&B was
a compromise, buried under those familiar languid
vocals. Bowie, in contrast, turned funky late, but
went all the way. More self-secure than Bolan, he
would not hedge his bets, and his confidence in the
studio was not fuelled by the cocaine; it was
innate. As confirmation of his imminent success, a
small group of fans gathered round the studio each

night. They were given the title of the Sigma kids,

regarded as a kind of lucky charm, and were
finally invited in to listen to the rough mixes
perhaps predictably, they were wildly enthusiastic.
The sense of focus around the Sigma sessions
provided a powerful contrast to Davids chaotic
private life. Ava, his girlfriend, had helped inspire
his work in the city; but during the recordings hed
frequently disappear, a cat on the prowl. I knew
the party was going on somewhere else, says
Cherry of his nocturnal escapades. When Angie
arrived in Philadelphia there was yet more drama,
when she heard Ava was on the scene and ran off
towards a hotel window, threatening to throw
herself out.
Angies behaviour was all the more extreme in
that she was one of the few at the time who didnt
drink or do drugs. David and Angie were caught in
a bizarre cycle where David would decide he
needed her and call her up; Angie would arrive,
only to be ignored, which provoked a crisis. It
was a very odd relationship, very weird to be
around, concluded Zanetta, who realised during

these weeks that David was considering finally

ridding himself of Angie. The timing was
significant, for it followed, by only a few days,
Davids belated understanding of his relationship
with MainMan.
The devastating conversation took place in a
New York hotel at the end of July. Coked out of his
mind, as was Zanetta, Bowie poured out his woes:
Did I work this hard, to have nothing? The pair
were discussing the money that was pouring out of
MainMan, when Zanetta realised that David
thought he owned half the organisation. It was
odd, says Zanetta. He didnt understand that he
didnt own [half of] MainMan. We were sitting
there, going over what had gone wrong and trying
to keep it all together. I adored both David and
Tony, so this was more than heartbreaking it felt
like the end of the world.
Traumatic as the situation was for Zanetta, for
David it was far worse. Hed simply always
assumed he owned his own company, his own
music; the situation, as mapped out by Zanetta, was
so horrifically different, he seemed incapable of

comprehending it. Zanetta tried to explain to him

that he owned half his own revenue, less expenses,
but had no share in the other MainMan enterprises.
The obvious next step, if David wanted to ensure
he had received everything he was entitled to, was
to hire an accountant and go through the books,
where every penny of expenditure was
documented. But David had no interest in analysing
his predicament. Defries had created a magical
aura, a cocoon where David could create. Now the
magic bubble had popped. Over subsequent weeks,
David made no effort to investigate his contract
with MainMan; he was only interested in
terminating it. It was coming to an end between
them, says Zanetta, their conflicted go-between.
Part of that was money. Part of it was Defries
megalomania. In fact, they were both
megalomaniacs.
Tony had been a total father figure, adds Ava
Cherry. David would do everything Tony said,
would listen to his every word. When he heard
about the money he was simply afraid.
The ramifications of Davids deal with

MainMan were complex; there were indeed

advantages to the way Davids contract was set up,
for it gave him control of his masters as long as
he remained with MainMan. Defries himself
maintains that MainMans unique position as
owner of Davids master recordings increased his
royalties from the industry standard 10 per cent to
16 per cent, a cut that was, in the early 1970s,
unusually generous. But one crucial aspect of their
relationship is beyond debate. David believed he
was a partner in MainMan; in reality, he was an
employee. His failure to even question his own
status displayed staggering naivet.
This discovery was a devastating blow to
Davids self-esteem. As he saw it, his father figure
had betrayed him. Ava Cherry, and Coco,
comforted him throughout the distraught crying jags
that overcame him whenever he thought about his
situation, but most of the time, his problems were
too bleak to contemplate. Instead, David fixed on
Angie, deciding he could no longer cope with her
outbursts. For months to come, he would continue
to play his public role with his wife maintaining

the image that, as Scott Richardson puts it, had

made the world fall in love with them but
Davids emotional detachment from Angie was
part of his detachment from MainMan. Angie, more
than David, had defined MainMans image; it was
she who had established the companys cradle at
Haddon Hall, who had formed the relationship
with the Pork crew. As Leee Childers points out,
MainMan had been created in Angies image.
For David, both were now encumbrances. But in
the short term he would keep his counsel, while he
worked out how to cut himself loose.
The summer of 1974 was temperate and balmy,
and when David resumed his tour the band now
augmented with Carlos Alomar, Ava Cherry and
most of the Sigma crew his personal traumas
were briefly forgotten in the excitement of
creation. For the time being, David informed
Defries, via Tony Zanetta, that he was planning a
new stripped-down production, and wanted to
ditch the Hunger City set and play against a white
backdrop. Defries affected nonchalance at the

news that the $400,000 construction was destined

for the trash-heap.
Over seven nights at Hollywoods Universal
Amphitheatre, Davids claim to bona fide
superstar status was laid out in the most convincing
fashion. His previous retirement seemed only to
add to his unpredictability and glamour. The
Hollywood aristocracy turned out; Diana Ross
made a conspicuous appearance in a silver gown,
as did her fellow Motown stars The Jackson Five.
Marc Bolan was another attendant on the
triumphant hero. He had bitched about David in
print earlier that year, deriding his American
success as all marketing gloss. Now, pudgy and
nervous, he paid due fealty to the man who had so
often paid tribute to him. David was obviously at
a high point and Marc at a low point, says Zanetta,
who sat with the two of them at the Beverly
Wilshire hotel. But David did not gloat at all, he
was very kind. Later that year, Marc would tell
Melody Maker how he would be directing David
in his first movie. By then, with David being
courted by Hollywoods biggest stars, Marcs

bravado seemed unbearably sad. Iggy Pop

eventually turned up, too. After his split with
MainMan, and well-publicised attacks on that
fuckin carrot-top for sabotaging his Raw Power
album, he had finally split from The Stooges
following a legendarily disastrous last tour. His
last public performance had been a pathetic affair
at Rodneys English Disco, which culminated in
him stabbing his chest with a blunt steak knife.
Now mocked around Hollywood as a trashcan
drug user, Iggy missed Davids show after being
beaten up by a bunch of surfers in the parking lot.
He turned up later to cadge food.
Burying himself in musical preparations
throughout the LA shows, David seemed genuinely
happy; over successive nights he coached Ava
Cherry, ready for her solo number, which was
Luther Vandrosss Maybe Its Love. He was the
perfect mentor: rehearsing and encouraging her.
He walked me through the whole thing, the
movement, the way I would enter the stage. He was
very nurturing, it was wonderful.
David had even seemed gracious and hospitable

when a young BBC director, Alan Yentob,

appeared in Hollywood, explaining that Tony
Defries had, in a momentary lapse, agreed to give
him access. Impressed by Yentobs explanation of
the theme of the documentary that this would be
an exploration of a significant, serious artist in his
new, American setting David agreed to grant him
an interview.
Yentobs documentary would be unforgettable, a
gripping depiction of a fractured, dislocated
existence. One of the main contributors to that
fractured aura was a local celebrity who
introduced himself to David after one of the first
Hollywood shows. Freddy Sessler, concentration
camp survivor and rock n roll fan, was the kind
of guy who can make a party happen, says Iggy
Pop. Sessler is one of those characters whose
existence is rarely acknowledged in the wider
world, despite the influence he had behind the
scenes. For decades he acted as companion to
Keith Richards and Ron Wood, loved for his
Chico Marx-style gruff humour and for his ability
to source the best drugs in the West. With

customary ease, Freddy gained admission to the

Beverly Wilshire, his pockets bulging with vials of
pure Merck medicinal cocaine, far more
powerful than anything available in New York.
This was the mother lode, the drug lauded by
Sigmund Freud as this magical substance. From
then on, Freddy would be Davids companion, too.
Over those weeks in Hollywood, David was
also being courted by the UKs most glamorous
movie icon: Elizabeth Taylor. Their first meeting
was awkward Terry ONeill, who photographed
David for the Diamond Dogs sleeve, invited
David to a shoot at director George Cukors house,
for which David arrived two hours late
dishevelled and out of it. Liz was pretty annoyed
and on the verge of leaving, but we managed to
persuade her to stay. Lizs irritation with David
was outweighed by her own instinct for publicity.
A huge star in the 1960s, Taylor had fared less
well in the 1970s and was eager to be associated
with Bowie: ONeills photos showed the two
frolicking like teenagers, Liz embracing David,
holding his cigarette suggestively.

Within days she was making high-profile visits

to Davids rehearsals, and floating the idea that
David would star in The Blue Bird, a remake of
Maurice Tourneurs 1918 movie, in the press. Her
adoption of David as an up-and-coming superstar
was made official during a party for Ricci Martin
Deans son in Beverly Hills, where they sat
close to each other, chatting softly.
There was another star in the cavalcade of
celebrities gathering around David and Liz that
evening: John Lennon, then in the midst of his socalled Lost Weekend with May Pang. John was
saucer-eyed, according to Pang, at seeing so
many of his movie heroes in LA and was soaking
up the vibe at the party, chatting with Elton John.
Taylor called John and May over, introducing them
to David in her sing-song, almost childish voice.
John was chummy, But David was odd,
remembers May Pang. After a few seconds he told
them, I have to go now. A few minutes later they
walked into another room to see David and Liz,
still huddled together. It was strange David was
very thin, I remember he seemed stand-offish. John

didnt know what to think. Me, him and Elton were

looking at each other: what was that about?
Lennon was not offended, merely puzzled.
As the tour moved on to the Midwest, and then
the east, early in October, the soul vibe became
more obvious, and Hunger Citys skyscrapers
finally met the wrecking ball. These shows were
mocked by some observers as a patronising
wannabe soul revue, but for band and crew these
were thrilling dates, with the set evolving from one
night to the next. Received wisdom would have it
that Davids cocaine habit reduced him to such a
state of dehydration that his lips adhered to his
gums: Ava Cherry, who stood close to him on
stage, remembers no such event. But there were
many moments of crisis, in particular a show in
Boston that November. Before the show started, he
demanded a gramme of cocaine. Im not going on
unless I get it. After scurrying around, a flunkie
came up with the goods. But when David walked
out on stage the first two rows stayed immobile.
For some reason, most of them had dressed up in
Halloween costumes for the occasion. Skeleton

masks, scary masks, says Cherry.

Why are they doing that? David appealed to
his backing singers. Why the masks? He was
terrified, offended that his fans saw him simply as
a freak. Then, as he made his way out of the Music
Hall, he was handed a poster-sized sheet. On it
were tombstones bearing his name. The poster
troubled him for days. Later he mentioned it to
Ava, when trying to explain his own behaviour: If
you dont like some of the things I do, thats why
I dont live a normal life.
Writer Mick Farren had been sent to report on
the tour for the NME, and found himself relishing
the weird culture clash, like a crazed Funkadelic
tour, with added cocaine, paranoia and
Scientology, he says. Farren loved the James
Brown vs Elvis vibe obviously theyd cobbled it
together on the fly, but it was kinda cool.
Photographer Robert Matheu remembered the same
seedy glamour in Detroit. The drugs were
apparent in so many ways they actually seemed
to add to the overall vibe, there was a darkness to
it. You know, an Ike Turner thing: Ike always had

that vibe, you knew he was holding. The culture

clash was reflected in backstage friction between
the band: Kamens crew seemed at odds with the
Main Ingredient players; Coco Schwab was lined
up against Ava Cherry, or Angie when she turned
up; the Scientology vibe was still present thanks to
Mike Garson, plus there were monstrous amounts
of cocaine in evidence. Piles of the shit
everywhere, says Farren. They must have been
carrying half-ounce bags. This was about as
excessive as it got in a period of excess.
When he wasnt on stage, David, whom Farren
knew back from his Lindsay Kemp days, looked
lost and, as in the later stages of his previous
American tour, lonely. Most of the time he
walked around in an overcoat with his hood up,
nose dripping, twitchily rejecting any attempts at
conversation. When anyone got in the lift with him,
he looked terrified. Many outsiders remember the
cut-throat, paranoid atmosphere, with different
cliques trying to entice outsiders back to their
room for some blow, each accusing the others of
being drug-fiends, even of stealing money. But on-

stage, David was always in command; the

backstage friction gave the music an edge. David
had people playing against each other on stage, to
make them better, says Ava Cherry, like the
James Brown thing, always that pressure of,
Youre in, Youre out. Sometimes it was brilliant.
Me and Diane [Sumler] would fight harder to be
better than each other cos we were opposites.
The atmosphere was all the more bizarre
because the darkness and paranoia were offset by
the mood of the kids, as Zanetta called them:
Carlos, Robin and Luther were wholesome and
loving, relishing their big break. Although guitarist
Earl Slick had his own mindless moments, as he
recalls, he too seemed like a carefree child, in his
element, and Ava Cherry, innocent and luscious,
was adored by most of the crew. In another
bizarre touch, Zowie and his nanny Marion Skene
were around for several dates. While David was
generally distracted, when he made time for his
son he was absolutely attentive focusing on him
completely, says Zanetta. Likewise, Davids
boyish enthusiasm was obvious when he

concentrated on the music, and at soundchecks the

whole crazy family would come together and unite,
with a wired optimism.
In the afternoons when the troupe remained in
the city, at the Michigan Palace or Chicagos
Crown Theatre, there would be extended jam
sessions where David would be filled with energy,
pointing out riffs and directing arrangements, and
over the October dates, new songs were added one
by one: the devotional, gospelly Its Gonna Be
Me, and a funked-up version of The Flares 1963
Doo Wop hit, Foot Stompin.
The autumn and winter of 1974 was the period
most marked by a cocaine blitz, one in which
David would famously describe himself as
permanently out of my gourd. Yet even outsiders,
although
shocked
by
Davids
physical
deterioration, were somehow convinced that this
was simply another phase, one which would pass.
Hes such a survivor, Mick Farren points out,
plus we werent all dropping dead back then.
Only in retrospect, says Farren, did he reflect on
the psychological burdens David had assumed.

Its like what Lennon said about Elvis: I dont

know how he did it, cos there were four of us and
it nearly killed us. And of course there were only
two of David.
Davids performance on The Dick Cavett Show,
taped on 2 November, 1974, during the New York
dates, was the high watermark of his out of my
gourd period, and the perfect embodiment of the
tours prickly, paranoid energy. Sniffing loudly,
with his eyes flitting from side to side, David
bares his teeth several times in a grimace almost
like those of the skeleton masks that had freaked
him out in Boston. As if in reaction, Cavett
mentions black magic and how some people said
theyre scared to sit and talk to you. Davids main
response is to fiddle obsessively with his cane,
and for a moment Cavett looks truly worried, as
though his guest is drawing a pentagram on the
studio floor. At odd moments a little chuckle
here, his statement that when hes on stage thats
it, [Im] complete he still manages to
impersonate a normal human being, but mostly he

revels in his fractured condition. Together with

Alan Yentobs Cracked Actor, screened by the
BBC on 26 January, 1975, this would be the
definitive depiction of Bowie in his most alien
state. But in the sense that he is exploring the limits
of his mental condition, he is also recognisably
David Bowie, in exactly the same way that the
coked-out David witnessed by Keith Christmas
was merely another manifestation of the person
hed known in 1969.
As if in tribute to Davids newly minted image
as an icon of excess, the police raided the end-oftour party at Atlantas Hyatt Regency on 1
December. Backing singers Geoff MacCormack
and Gui Andrisano had noticed a couple of
strange guys with bad taste in clothes and
suspiciously short haircuts hanging out in the hotel
suite and warned their fellow musicians. When the
police broke in, none of the crew was holding, but
the suite contained nine phials of cocaine, ten
lumps of hashish, five bags of grass and three
roaches. Tony Zanetta, who had booked the suite,
was dragged off for an overnight stay in the cells,

but finally released without charges.

After an exhausting drive back to New York,
David had booked studio time to complete Young
Americans at the Hit Factory, around 3 December.
After David added more overdubs and completed
Fascination based on a Luther Vandross song
and Win, Tony Visconti flew over to London
with the tapes, to mix them at his home studio,
happy at finally completing the thrilling, but
gruelling sessions.
In his first few days back in New York, David
had also called up John Lennon and May Pang; he
was nervous about meeting the ex-Beatle again,
and at one point called Tony Visconti over to the
Sherry Netherlands hotel to help ease the
conversation along. Although their meeting in LA
had gone nowhere, David and John had a huge
amount in common. Bowie would talk about John
frequently; John was interested in David, friendly,
but invariably slightly puzzled. David was still
very nervous, John was happy to hang out, says
May Pang. The atmosphere remained slightly
awkward, all the more so when Paul and Linda

McCartney who had just bumped into John and

May entered the picture in mid-January.
The four of them went over to the Sherry to meet
David, who repeatedly played the various mixes of
his new album for them, and we had heard it
already. In lots of different states, says Pang.
David was about to replay the acetate for John for
at least the second time when John told him,
David its great, a great album is there
anything else we can listen to as well? David
looked devastated; John hadnt noticed Paul had
made almost exactly the same remark a few
minutes earlier, and when the couple returned to
their apartment on 52nd Street that night, the phone
was ringing as they came through the door. Yes
David, sorry man, I didnt mean that, John
consoled his offended, cocaine-fuelled friend.
May Pang remembers that Lennon was taken
aback by the size of Davids coke habit, remarking
to May, Ive never seen such mounds of the stuff!
But John enjoyed his company, and although he
was puzzled when David told him that he was
planning to add a cover version of Across the

Universe to the album, he instantly agreed to turn

up at Electric Lady studio around 15 January, for
he was a studio hound. He loved being in on the
recording, says renowned engineer Eddie Kramer,
who worked the session, and just playing guitar
he was a ridiculously good rhythm player.
In the studio, the environment they both loved,
Johns empathy with David was obvious, Kramer
observed. David too was obviously having a blast:
Whatever stimulants he was taking didnt affect
his ability to be creative, says Kramer, who was
present when Carlos Alomar started playing the
riff, adapted from a Rascals song, Jungle Walk,
that hed added to the bands live version of Foot
Stompin. David said, Ill have that, or words
to that effect and he took the riff that Carlos
played and made a song out of it.
Lennon was playing around on the acoustic in
the lounge, singing a couple of lines from Shirley
& Companys disco hit Shame, Shame, Shame
over the top of the same one-chord vamp. So he
was working it, and David walks in and hears
that, says Pang, who remembers David leaving the

room and returning with a complete set of lyrics

within twenty minutes.
David had misheard shame as fame a
subject hed been discussing with John earlier
and also the title of yet another disastrous
MainMan project, a Tony Ingrassia play launched
just a few weeks before. The misheard word
would give him his biggest hit to date. Although
some key recollections vary as to whether Carlos
started the vamp first and John joined in, or vice
versa, Bowie was very much in charge, he knew
exactly what he wanted, says Kramer, who
watched David work the elements into a song once
John had left the studio. Part of Lennons own
guitar vamp survived in the three acoustic chords
F minor, C minor, and B flat that open the song
and punctuate the main theme before the last verse.
Carloss riff, effective on Foot Stompin, was the
killer element on Fame; but its Bowie who
makes sense of it he plays the crunchy ascending
guitar riff at the end of each line.
Restricted mostly to a single chord, Fame is
obsessive, monotonous and claustrophobic. On

Hunky Dory, David had worked with piano

chords; here he was playing with sound itself,
using the studio as a giant cut-and-paste machine.
Yet the emotional impact was just as powerful, for
the song was an almost literal rendition of his life,
jump-cutting from his omnipresent worries about
money what you need you have to borrow; to
his loneliness takes you there where things are
hollow.
Fames last-minute addition to the album,
which had already been trailed in the press as
Fascination in December, would be the making of
Young Americans ; it would also arguably break it,
too, for David felt compelled to include his
version of Across the Universe, the song that had
inspired Lennons arrival in the studio. The cover
version was a horrible mess, marred by Davids
warbling vocal, the most extreme example so far of
his mimicking of Bryan Ferry and Scott Walkers
style, and an obvious flaw that the albums
detractors would latch onto. (Lennon was just as
puzzled as everyone else: Why that song? he
asked May Pang.) When Fame became Davids

first US number one, the following September,

John was as delighted as David. He had that
competitiveness with the others guys [i.e. Paul
McCartney] and he thought it was great, says
Pang, who disappeared from Johns life in
February, as the ex-Beatle returned to Yoko and
The Dakota. May would later marry Tony Visconti,
whom shed met at the Sherry that winter.
The excitement around the recording was one of
the few high spots in a bleak winter. Much of
Davids Christmas was spent in a coke-fuelled
haze with Tony Zanetta at the Sherry Netherlands.
David had lost his very last vestige of faith in Tony
Defries, and in all of MainMan, on 18 November,
the day that the company made its grand entrance
and its ignominious exit on Broadway. Fame
was a chaotic, confused comedy based on the life
of Marilyn Monroe, written by Tony Ingrassia, the
mastermind of Pork. Pork had launched the
MainMan circus; Fame, which closed after one
performance, was its death-knell, for Bowie
deeply resented the reported $250,000 that had
been lost on its production, money his hits had

generated. Davids conversations with John

Lennon at Electric Lady confirmed his decision.
John had just divested himself of Beatles manager
Allen Klein, commemorated by one of his last
great songs, Steel and Glass, which mocked
Kleins LA tan and his infamous BO (you leave
your smell like an alley cat). Defries frequently
claimed to have learned his trade from Klein; if
John had had enough of Klein, David had had
enough of Defries.
Over Christmas, David attempted to contact
Defries, who was away on his favourite island
hideaway of Mustique, without success. The two
finally met up in January. The encounter was
strangely dysfunctional, as far as those close to
them can tell, with neither man coming to the point.
David told friends Defries had accepted his
decision to leave MainMan; Defries believed hed
smoothed over Davids concerns and persuaded
him to stay. In later months, when their split
became increasingly ill-tempered, Defries would
tell his friends how disappointed he was in
David. He was let down by his ingratitude, his

lack of understanding of commercial realities, his

addiction to drugs (for added drama he speculated
David was on heroin, too).
Later, when friends asked Defries, the supreme
negotiator, why he had failed to negotiate a
settlement at his meeting with David, he would
coldly ask, David had been working for me. Why
would I want to work for him?
Defries also seemed to astutely judge Michael
Lippman, the lawyer David had found to represent
him. Previously an agent for CMA, Lippman had
pitched film work to both David and Angie; hed
been a fully qualified partner in a law firm rather
than a mere clerk like Defries, and was liked and
trusted by those around David, but could never
match his opponents aggression. Defries told his
friends that Lippman was a very junior agent with
not much to offer, and that hed advised Bowie to
retain a more high-powered lawyer.
MainMan would be dismembered in Davids
wake, all its artists subsequently dropped; Defries
subsequent management career failed to make
headlines. One singer did approach him for advice

a few years later, Defries confided to his friends.

Her name was Madonna.
*
In later years, Defries would be painted as cynical
and manipulative; but speak to anyone who worked
with him, and a trace of the magic still lingers. For
Defries was never the demon figure hes made
out, says Hugh Attwooll, one-time head of
MainMan England. Hes a man without care. He
knew he could beat the system and he did it. All he
said to David was that hed make him a star. He
didnt elaborate and say, Ill use a lot of your
money to make it work. My view is that he gets
rather a bad press. Because it did work without
it, David wouldnt be as famous as he is.
Over the next year, David would be dogged by
disputes with Defries, who would retain a share of
Davids future records for the remainder of the
MainMan contract term, right up to 1982, with the
right to reject any album should Defries deem it
uncommercial. Such onerous conditions naturally
made most observers side with David. But those
who were there testify that, not only was Defries

was the key figure in helping Bowie rise to fame,

he was also an integral part of that periods
unforgettable magic.
What entertained him was the intellectual
challenge of doing it taking the risk and making it
work, says Attwooll. He spun a web of magic,
which no one had ever done before, and persuaded
RCA to spend huge amounts of money both in the
UK and US. He was a very nice bloke, but what
line he stepped over in achieving what he achieved
is probably an argument that will never be
satisfied.
David, meanwhile, spent years dealing with the
ramifications of the split with the figure whod
overseen his rise to fame. Hed put off his
confrontation with Defries for months; Davids
friends, including Coco Schwab and Ava Cherry,
hoped the split would finally produce some
resolution. But there would be none.
David Jones had embarked on a long, gruelling,
ruthless journey in pursuit of fame and success;
many of his peers had shown similar ambition, but

few had transformed themselves so painstakingly

from a mediocrity into an inspirational songwriter.
Soon, hed discover, the very stuff hed created, at
such personal cost, was lost to him. Davids
friends hoped that his final split with his one-time
father figure would bring closure. Instead, it
brought crisis.

14
White Stains
He and this is glamorising it did use
the drugs to enlarge his capabilities in
every dimension. It really magnified his
intelligence, if you will. But it had its
way with him.
Glenn Hughes

David believed that cutting his ties with Defries

promised mental freedom; independence in his
business affairs seemed almost secondary. Forget
about the money, he had told a couple of people,
thats all in the past. Above all, he had
confidence in his music; his new album would
finally bring him mainstream success in America,
and represented the ultimate bargaining chip in his

relationship with RCA who, early in January,

confirmed that they were prepared to deal with
David directly, effectively cutting Defries out of
the deal.
But by February 1975, the awful truth dawned
that the freedom might be illusory; that although
David had left MainMan, MainMan and Defries
retained control of his existing masters. During
his conversations with John Lennon whose
business savvy he admired he discovered that
Lennon had lost his own publishing, and at times
despaired of escaping Allen Kleins clutches.
Davids contract with Defries, as an employee,
was even more restrictive. That was when
Davids whole mood changed, says Ava Cherry,
who witnessed Davids conversations with John.
He was always irritated after that, quick to get
angry. David was a little bit naive and he
couldnt believe hed really signed so much away.
While David was mired in his financial worries,
the extent of his physical deterioration was
revealed in gripping fashion, on 26 January, when
Alan Yentobs Cracked Actor was screened on the

BBC. In later years, it would be acclaimed as one

of the greatest music documentaries ever made.
With the minimal interview time hed been given,
Yentob lingered over every shot, capturing
perfectly the emptiness and loneliness in which
David was sealed. Defries predecessor, Ken Pitt,
was one of many disturbed by Davids fractured,
disconnected state. He concluded simply that
David was ill. That was what all the Defries big
talk had done for him. This was not the David I
knew. It was very disappointing.
An interview with Bruno Stein published in
Februarys Creem was even more alarming,
indicative of what seemed classic cocaine-induced
paranoia. David was obsessed with UFO coverups. And I made sightings [of UFOs] six, seven
times a night for about a year when I was in the
observatory, he confided to the astonished writer,
before pronouncing that Adolf Hitler was a
perfect figurehead. In reality, these proclamations
reflected an old obsession, dating back to when he
was hanging out with Lesley Duncan at Redington
Road. All those who had gone UFO-spotting with

him around 1967, like Jeff Dexter and Wayne

Bardell, confirm, We did see UFOs absolutely.
Equally, Adolf Hitler was an old, favourite topic
for debate, for David used to eulogise the work of
Albert Speer back in Arnold Corns days. Yet what
had been cheery, hipsters chat in the sixties
became ominous and disturbing in 1975.
While onlookers reactions to Davids state
varied from horror to fascination to cynicism, one
woman saw a solution to a movie casting problem.
Maggie Abbott was an agent at CMA whod been
crucial in uniting her clients Mick Jagger and
writer Donald Cammell with Nicolas Roeg for
Performance the definitive celluloid depiction
of late sixties decadence. Shed first heard of
David through a friend who trained with him at
Lindsay Kemps studio now he was, thanks to
CMA, her client. Yentobs documentary convinced
her that he would be perfect for the lead role in
Roegs upcoming project, The Man Who Fell to
Earth. Abbotts tenacity played a crucial part in
the genesis of the film, not least because the BBC
refused to release a video of Cracked Actor for

Roeg and producer Si Litvinoff to watch, and she

had to use cunning charm to smuggle out a copy.
Nic and Si didnt take any convincing, they knew
as soon as they saw Cracked Actor, especially the
sequence with David in the back of the limo. The
pair, and Abbott, were struck by how, as Bowie
gazed out of the car window, he seemed totally
isolated, disconnected from the world alien.
Roeg had planned to cast Michael Crighton,
Mick Jagger and later Peter OToole to play
Newton, the alien who comes to earth in search of
water and is corrupted by earthly vices. Crighton
and OToole were unavailable; Abbott talked
Roeg out of using Jagger, her other major client.
Watching the documentary, Roeg noticed countless
facets of Bowie that resonated with the part. But
the most important one was that curious artificial
voice. It wasnt absolutely definable as a brogue
or accent. Like, did it really exist? Today, Roeg
admits that while the decision to cast Bowie was
obvious in retrospect, I dont know if it was
immediate. Likewise Maggie Abbott who flew
to New York in February, 1975 to show David the

script remembers his initial response as

cautious cool. His reserve was not so striking
as his physical state, which was even worse than
Cracked Actor had suggested; his hip bones jutted
through the jump suit he was wearing, his skin was
white, and his teeth grey. Ghastly, is Abbotts
description. But he was astute: he understood the
logic of her case, asked the correct questions, and
was obviously intrigued by Abbotts connections
with Roeg and Mick Jagger. She, in turn, had no
doubt about whether he would rise to the task. He
could sleep-walk through it, she told Roeg, who
arranged to meet David a couple of days later.
Convinced that signing David was crucial to his
movie, Roeg won him over by his gentle
persistence, for David had forgotten their meeting
and was busy, says Roeg, in a recording session.
Roeg waited for most of the day, and when Bowie
eventually arrived late that evening the pair talked
for only a few minutes before David agreed to sign
up.
Roeg was an undeniably impressive character,
and his assiduous courting of David together with

the completion of Fame both represented hope,

for the thought of Defries control over his work
which culminated in attempts by MainMan to
injunct the release of Young Americans made
David feel like a helpless, naive child. Davids
encounters with John Lennon, through January and
early February, brought out the best in him his
unaffected joy and enthusiasm for he was
impressed with how down to earth and un-starry
Lennon was, and acted the same in his company.
John, too, had come to genuinely like David; for all
his quirks, he was a committed rock n roller, like
John, and once the stand-offishness had faded
away, he seemed simply like a younger brother
who needed counselling.
But the influence of other stars was far less
benign. Cherry Vanilla had left MainMan before
Davids split, and kept in regular touch; she had
introduced him to Norman Fisher when hed first
moved to New York, and would have brief chats
with David quite regularly, the two of them
gossiping away before David got to the point
which was usually a request if he could borrow

her apartment for sex sessions, away from the

watchful eye of Ava, or Angie, who lived briefly
nearby before returning to London. Then, one
evening, Vanilla saw David hurrying down the
street, asked if he was OK, and he blurted out that
hed just been to see Lou Reed. Dont ever go
near him, he warned her. Hes the devil.
Vanilla was only briefly worried. He was on
this trip, whatever Lou had done to him had
freaked him out that day. By then it was well
known that David was living solely on a diet of
coke and milk but like most of her circle, she
was convinced that cocaine had no downside. We
didnt think of it as ill then. We thought of it as
fashionable.
Davids encounter with Led Zep guitarist Jimmy
Page in February was even more unsettling. Their
acquaintance went back to The Manish Boys days,
but during a night with Ava at Bowies house, the
atmosphere was strained, and then when Page spilt
wine on some silk cushions and tried to blame
Ava, Bowie turfed him out, spitting out, Why
dont you take the window. The two glared at

each other; Page seemed to be invoking dark forces

against David, who in turn, says Ava Cherry,
wanted to show Jimmy that his will was stronger.
Then all of a sudden, after that night, David has all
these books around and is reading them.
Davids battle of wills with Page helped inspire
a deeper investigation of the works of the
wickedest man in the world. Jimmy Pages
devotion to the work of occultist Aleister Crowley
was well known he had bought and restored
Crowleys famed magical headquarters, Boleskine
House, in 1971. Crowleys work was popular in
hippie circles from 1969; Graham Bond, Elton
Johns old employer, released Holy Magick, an
album devoted to Crowley, in 1970; Sombrero
regular Robert Kensell was another devotee.
David himself had name-checked Crowley in
Quicksand, and possibly Holy Holy, too; those
close to him in 1971, like Dai Davies, believe that
back then Bowie had a fashionable, but fleeting
interest in dropping Crowleys name, as he did
with Nietzsche. The meeting with Page seemed to
convert what had been shallow name-dropping into

a full-blown obsession.
Over the course of 1975, David embarked on a
journey that would take him into the heart of
psychic darkness. One key text in this journey was
according to Gary Lachman, an acquaintance of
Bowie who has written on the occult Trevor
Ravenscourts The Spear of Destiny. Published in
1973, the book explored Hitler and Himmlers
harnessing of occult powers, notably the Holy
Grail and its partner artefact, the lance that pierced
Christs side. Other Bowie influences almost
certainly included the hugely fashionable Morning
of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques
Bergier. Together with works by Crowley and his
acolytes, these formed the core of Bowies reading
list. Lachman debated such subjects as the occult
interests of Outsider author Colin Wilson with
Bowie, and believes he is interested in lots of
such ideas, and can speak intelligently about them.
Jimmy Page went into it more deeply and was a
serious devotee Bowie picked lots of different
elements, and gave them a twist.
By the time Bowie met Page, the Led Zep

guitarist had spent over six years investigating

Crowleys work; Davids immersion was
comparatively brief. Rather than seek to harness
dark powers, he would embark on a coke-addled
quest for meaning. In 1993, Bowie would explain
his fascination with Himmlers search for the Holy
Grail and Spear of Destiny as an Arthurian Need
this search for a mythological link with God. But
somewhere along the line it was perverted by what
I was reading and what I was drawn to.
Like The Rolling Stones, whod danced with the
devil in the guise of Crowley disciple Kenneth
Anger, Bowies new, dangerous aura would take a
heavy toll on him, and those around him. Obsessed
and scared by the ominous forces he saw gathering
around him, David started planning his escape
from New York. It wasnt just people like Jimmy
Page or Lou Reed he wanted to flee; even normally
well-behaved musicians seem to resent his
presence. Aretha Franklin had mocked him at the
Grammys (Im so happy I could kiss David
Bowie), ruining his mood for weeks, and at a
party thrown by Alice Coopers manager, Shep

Gordon, Bob Dylan had delivered one of his

trademark put-downs: Glam rock isnt music, he
had sneered, before turning his back on David, as
the watching industry heavyweights and their
flunkies gasped.
A move to LA, ready for The Man Who Fell to
Earth shoot later delayed as Roeg and producer
Si Litvinoff looked for backers represented a
clean break with such nastiness. It meant hed be
closer to his new, Hollywood manager, Michael
Lippman; it also meant he could escape Ava
Cherry and her complaints about his obsessive
womanising. (Angie, in comparison, had given up,
and seemed content to pursue a mostly separate
existence.)
The move also meant David would be close to
LAs raconteur and coke dealer par excellence,
Freddy Sessler. Geoff MacCormack, who flew
over to join David a couple of weeks later, would
characterise this period in LA as a time when a
common form of greeting was for someone simply
to say, Hi, and stick a silver spoon under your
nose. Freddy would arrive, not with a vial of

cocaine, but a plate. The potency and quantity of

Sesslers wares were unrivalled: they would
contribute towards Davids marked mental
deterioration over the summer of 1975.
Glenn Hughes, a twenty-three-year old English
bassist and singer whod recently joined Deep
Purple, had become fast friends with Bowie in LA
the previous year. During their long phone
conversations, Glenn then about to start on Deep
Purples last tour with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore
had offered David refuge at his house in Beverly
Hills. With a sizable coke habit himself, Glenn
was well aware of Davids increasing problems;
staggered to hear that David planned to make the
train trip on his own, he arranged for his driver to
pick up David from Union Station, when he arrived
in LA around 16 March, 1975. He wanted to make
sure that David wasnt left alone but it was a
vain hope. David was on his own a lot over that
period, says Hughes. He could be in a room of
five or six people, with a book, and be on his
own.
Over the following months, Glenns relationship

with David would be deepened and tempered by

their mutual obsession with cocaine: It was a dark
year for him, and for me. I know he doesnt like
to think about it now, but this is the service we
have to give back to people. We have to
acknowledge the dark side of what happened.
Throughout their friendship Bowie and Hughes
would have, at fleeting moments, the time of their
lives: rapping wildly about music, arguing about
clothes, mapping out the future. They were both
still young, invincible, and Bowie was a good
friend, advising Hughes, teaching him how to use
his influences but to keep moving on. He was also
a funny son of a bitch unusually for coke
addicts, theyd spend some of their time laughing
uproariously. But the enduring image of their time
together is the two of them, sitting alongside each
other, isolated, Glenn obsessively working out
riffs on the guitar, and David watching the same
dark, disquieting movies, over and over, both of
them lost in their own world: It was miserable. It
always is miserable.
Within a couple of days of his arrival in LA,

David re-encountered a paradigm of the West

Coast lifestyles corrosive effects, in the subdued
shape of Iggy Pop. Since hed last seen David, an
attempted partnership with ex-Doors keyboard
player Ray Manzarek had fallen apart, and Iggy
had been abandoned by his self-proclaimed
manager, Danny Sugerman. Late in 1974 hed
ended up at the Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) at
UCLAs Westwood complex, after being forced to
choose between jail and hospital by a cop whod
found him drooling aggressively at the customers
in Hamburger Hamlet.
When David arrived at NPI to visit, Iggy was in
a pathetic condition, withdrawing from the cocktail
of drugs that had permeated his system for the last
year. During his stay on the wards he had
fascinated the psychiatrists, who diagnosed an
excess of narcissism and, more seriously, an
underlying bipolar condition. Ex-Stooge James
Williamson had visited, but friends like Sugerman,
who had publicised his descent into oblivion,
stayed away. Nobody else came, nobody, Iggy
recalled two years later. Not even my so-called

friends in LA. But David came.

Even Iggy was surprised at Davids opening
words: Hey, do you want any blow? Being Iggy,
he took a toot. On his first visit, David was
accompanied by actor Dean Stockwell; later,
Dennis Hopper tagged along, as did Ola Hudson,
the clothes designer who became Davids main
companion over the summer. She was
accompanied by her son, Saul aka Slash, later the
top-hatted, guitar-slinging founder of Gun N
Roses. The nine-year-old was still distraught at his
parents
separation,
and
understandably
disorientated by his recent move from Stoke-onTrent, the homely centre of Englands pottery
industry, into the mental wildlands of Los Angeles:
seeing his mom with Bowie was, says Slash, like
watching an alien land in your back yard.
In truth, David was equally adrift in an alien
landscape. The city fascinated him LA is my
favourite museum, he had quipped to writer
Cameron Crowe while driving him on a mad jaunt
around the city in a borrowed yellow VW bug
but in the weeks between April and June 1975 his

mental condition deteriorated from excitable but

rational, to near-delusional. Glenn Hughes had
regular phone conversations when he was out of
LA on tour, and checked in with his house-minder,
Phil, who informed him, There are birds of every
colour, coming and going at all hours of the night.
Davids own description of what was going was a
good deal less jolly. The conversations were
scary, says Hughes. This black magic theme crept
in; and my house was near where the Sharon Tate
murders were, he was convinced the whole
Manson family was still around, and I found hes
hid all the knives in my house. Though I didnt
know it at the time, I was learning all about
cocaine psychosis which I would go through
myself soon.
In May, David took Iggy into Cherokee Studios
for a set of later-abandoned recordings. James
Williamson, one of the few people who
persevered with Iggy, accompanied him to the
sessions. By now Iggy was pretty far gone, says
Williamson. Bowie, in comparison, looked
together. He always was this reserved, almost

aloof kind of a guy so he just looked like a more

wasted version of that. What struck Williamson
most was the dreadful noise on the recordings, an
earth hum that would make them useless. Bowies
obliviousness to the noise was the main clue things
werent well. But hey, points out Williamson,
whod narrowly evaded a smack possession
charge that same year, everybody was in trouble
in LA then.
Iggys own recollections of Bowie from that
time seemed rather conventional (compared to his
own existence, perhaps it was). Sometimes I
would go over to his house for a couple of days.
There would be books all over the floor and
Dennis Hopper stopping by and David always
had ideas. He was about to do Man Who Fell to
Earth, and he had a great book, a slim volume
about a group of people for the government who
faked a Mars landing in a TV studio, a wonderful
little idea for a movie, he was keen on talking
about that. Then he had an idea for a rock n roll
move in which I would play a character called
Catastrophe. I indulged him in that cause, well

I am open to a lot of things.

Sadly, no detailed memories of the household
antics of Dennis Hopper, Iggy Pop and David
Bowie survive, for each of the participants
recollection of this period is patchy. Iggy by now
was like a sad child, profoundly depressed at the
failure of his own career. Hopper was in his own
coke-fuelled professional tailspin: with his nonlinear conversation, occasionally profound insights
into art and movies, and his fondness for boasting
about his acquaintance with Charlie Manson, the
actor was another walking embodiment of
Hollywood burn-out.
For Ava Cherry, who felt compelled to track
David down, her ex-lover too seemed another
burn-out the charming, driven man shed met at a
New York party in 1973 seemed to have
cracked. After Davids departure from New
York, Ava had disappeared to Jamaica with her
friend, ex-Playboy model Claudia Jennings, and
sometime in June managed to locate David at
Michael Lippmans villa, where hed moved from
Hughes house. Ava instantly recognised it was

over between us. Their relationship seemed a

relic of the past, and on occasion she was simply
scared. For a short time that summer, David came
to stay at Claudia Jennings house; Claudia was
always light-hearted and positive, but Ava felt
kind of afraid. David would talk about ghosts and I
didnt know how to take it. One day we were
talking, he started to cry and had a glass in his
hand. And it suddenly shattered. He is an intense
person, there was this energy you read about
people who sit in a chair and self-combust.
Claudia wasnt afraid I was.
Bowies own fear of occult forces was only
equalled by his fascination. His conflicted
emotions were epitomised by his visit to Kenneth
Anger, the film-maker and friend of Church of
Satan founder Anton LaVey. Bowie brought Ava
along with him for the meeting, but the pair could
only stomach around twenty minutes of Angers
presence. I dont remember exactly what
happened, says Cherry, I kind of blotted it out.
But then David started [to] tell me stories about
something that happened with Angie, that there was

a ghost in the house when they lived in

Beckenham. It seemed David saw ghosts
wherever he looked; later he invited Ava to
another house. Its Marilyn Monroes old house,
but its haunted, he told her. Another haunted
house. I went there, but it never was the same
between us. We made love after I left there but that
was it. Their relationship would peter out a few
weeks later.
Around the same time probably early June,
although the date and details vary across different
accounts David phoned Cherry Vanilla at her
apartment in New York. His voice was slurred, he
skipped halfway through a sentence to the next one,
and it was hard to know what he wanted. And then
Cherry Vanilla realised that He got it in his head
that these girls were out to make a devil baby with
him, to have him impregnate them. Nothing could
convince him that this was fantasy on his part, cos
he was coked to the gills. So he called me at my
apartment and he asked me if I knew any white
witches?
Fortunately, Vanillas social circle did include

one white witch Wally Elmlark, a fellow

contributor to Circus magazine. David took
Wallys phone number, and then, before he put the
phone down, promised hed produce Vanillas
solo album.
Like many such yarns, the details of Davids
exorcism vary with the telling; many years later,
Angie would describe how she was called in to
perform a ceremony at Davids house on Doheny
Drive, conducted on the phone with Wally
Elmlark, who talked her through the ritual, like the
control tower guiding in a novice pilot. Ava
Cherry remembers David burning a bracelet hed
been given by a singer hed been dating another
suspected witch. Other tales, including the one of
David storing bodily fluids in his refrigerator, look
to be myths that exaggerate a situation that was
already bizarre. When Cameron Crowe, Rolling
Stones seventeen-year-old star writer, came to
interview him at Lippmans house, Bowie lit a
black candle and informed him, Dont let me
scare the pants off you Ive been getting a little
trouble from the neighbours.

Paranoia, and ultimately psychosis, is a wellknown side-effect of heavy cocaine use, usually
found in combination with sleep deprivation;
heavy users might well stay up for three days at a
stretch, in which case, says Harry Shapiro of the
Drugscope organisation, heaven knows what you
will see. Beyond visual and auditory
hallucinations, heavy users the wealthy ones, on
upwards of one gramme a day often experience
ideas of reference: delusions that others are
plotting against them, or a narcissistic conviction
that they are the focus of worldly, and otherworldy, events. This is the condition in which
David spent most of the summer of 1975, a period
compellingly sketched by Crowe in his article,
published the following February.
The ease with which Bowie flitted from one
subject to another in the interview and most
striking the moment when he pulls down a blind,
momentarily convinced hes seen a body fall from
the sky, are disturbing, classic depictions of a
rock-star encounter. Bowie was an old-hand at
overawing or, more accurately, bullshitting

journalists, and any rational person would

conclude that much of his bizarre behaviour was
motivated by his unerring instinct for good copy.
But the crayoned marks on the blinds meant to
ward off evils spirits were genuine Glenn
Hughes found them all over his house on his return
from Europe. The fractured, disconnected state that
Bowie displayed to Cameron Crowe was for
real too, according to Ava Cherry.
Crowe was late for their second interview, in
June; pacing around anxiously waiting for the
Rolling Stone reporter to turn up, David and Ava
had snorted up huge lines of Freddy Sesslers
finest Merck and by the time Crowe arrived, We
were flying. We were fucked up, Im not going to
say we werent. The Bowie portrayed by Crowe,
Ava Cherry and others is a classic, isolated
narcissist, his mind racing from scheme to scheme.
To Crowe, he dismissed, icily, the subject of
MainMan; in reality, he was agonising over the
fate of his masters: the Tony Defries thing was
really affecting him, says Glenn Hughes,
addiction is all about burying your head in the

sand. But this was his period of hell. It was

natural that David would construct grandiose,
omnipotent fantasies in his conversations with
Cameron Crowe, for this was the man who had lost
his music, his birthright. He had been emasculated.
Dispossessed of a huge part of what had defined
his life, he really was rootless and alien.
Glenn Hughes returned to Los Angeles later in
May, and was the closest witness to Davids
desperate condition. Ava was finally off the scene;
Angie was staying, briefly, and picked up Hughes
from the airport, and on first impressions David
seemed okay. But within days, as Bowie and
Hughes stayed up for days at a stretch four, five
or more their existence became that of lifeless
wraiths, cut off from human warmth. Corinne a
source of succour, but also a gatekeeper who
enforced his isolation and driver Tony Mascia
were busy with other projects, and Michael
Lippman, too, had his hands full, there was so
much going on. Over those weeks running up to
filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth, David was
lonely, and mostly alone, but for occasional

visitors like Hughes.

It wasnt all darkness; David could be
hilariously funny. He christened Hughes old big
head, presented him with a portrait inscribed with
his new title, and spent hours badgering the rock
bassist to throw out his flares and blue denim.
Hed lose entire days engrossed in painting, and
shared his insights on various subjects freely.
Hughes, a fellow soul fan, loved Stevie Wonder,
and wanted to record with him. No, Bowie
instructed him. Its too obvious that youre
influenced by Stevie; do something with Nina
Simone, instead. Only in later years did Hughes
appreciate the depth of Bowies perceptiveness.
But those moments of clarity and positivity were
rare. Mostly, David would sit there, his forehead
creased, thinking, always thinking, and watching
the same movies again and again. From Hughes
perspective, Davids involvement with the occult
was exaggerated: it was something he was
frightened of, rather than drawn to. Yet Bowies
fascination with the Third Reich, often dismissed
as publicity-seeking, ran disturbingly deep. He

would watch a lot of movies. Never-ending Nazi

stuff, which hed watch with this constant frown on
his face. Sometimes Hughes would go home to
crash out, and return to Davids house a day later
to check on him, to see him sitting in the same
place, wearing the same clothes, with the same
frown, watching the same movies. Faced with the
endless black-and-white footage, Hughes could
manage little more than a coked-up wow. David
showed no evidence of racism, but his fascination
with Nazi lore seemed extreme. I couldnt analyse
what he read or saw, I wasnt capable his brain
was simply on a tangent to everybody elses. It
certainly wasnt spiritual who is spiritual when
theyre on coke?
At the time, Hughes assumed David was making
some kind of sense of the images and words
flooding through his consciousness. In reality,
Bowie was like a babbling drunk, convinced hes
discovered the secret of the universe. Other
conversations that summer made his encounters
with Cameron Crowe seem a model of rationality.
Talking to the NMEs Anthony OGrady in August,

David opined that a fascist dictatorship was on its

way, explaining, Its like a kaleidoscope no
matter how many little colours you put in it, that
kaleidoscope will make those colours have a
pattern and thats what happens with TV it
doesnt matter who puts what in the TV, by the end
of the year theres a whole format that the TV puts
together. The TV puts over its own plan Who
says the space people have got no eyes? You have
youve got one in every living room in the
world. Then, perhaps sensing his interviewers
realisation that he was talking gibberish, David
added, Thats theoretical, of course.
Glenn Hughes didnt imagine that aliens were
controlling his TV, but the cocaine would bring
similar delusions: by the end of the year he was
hiring guard dogs and security to deal with
imagined intruders. Yet, in his view, David
positively revelled in his own world. David used
to drive his Mercedes alone through Los Angeles,
on blow, the most paranoid son of a bitch in the
city, wearing a hat, all the way from Doheny Drive
to Beverly Hills. I tried it once that year, but I was

too paranoid, too loaded. He arrived at my house

and Im, How the fuck did you get here?
David had undoubtedly learned to use cocaine,
savouring the impact it had on his psyche. He
and this is glamorising it did use the drugs to
enlarge his capabilities in every dimension, says
Hughes. It really magnified his intelligence, if you
will. But it had its way with him.
Ironically, it was playing the part of an alien that
would force this damaged creature to abandon his
quest and come back to earth. Even as he started to
prepare for the upcoming movie shoot in New
Mexico, waiting for the mostly English crew to
assemble, David seemed capable of utter focus and
dedication. In a strange way, Davids frazzled
mental state seemed to accentuate his almost childlike earnestness. He was still a showbiz pro.
Given direction by Nicholas Roeg in rehearsal, he
was calm, almost pliant; none of those present
remember any trace of nervousness.
Shooting of The Man Who Fell to Earth had
been delayed by problems with the intended

backers, Columbia Pictures, who withdrew after

realising their choice for leading man, Robert
Redford, had been supplanted. The newly formed
British Lion company, led by producers Michael
Deeley and Barry Spikings, stepped into the
breach. There would be constant disputes over
budgets and other issues, but when filming
commenced late in June at Lake Fenton, New
Mexico, the tight schedule and budget became an
integral part of the movies feel. When a passing
tramp turned and belched in the opening shot, Roeg
incorporated the scene as a motif. Everyone
pitched in: Bowies limo driver, Tony Mascia,
performed the same function for the character of
Newton. Roeg and his star shared the same
instincts. During filming, we were close and not
close at the same time, says Roeg. We didnt go
out for dinner, but we were very close in
understanding.
If, for Bowie, his greatest movie was a
depiction of his condition, adrift in LA, the perfect
example of the citys emotional blankness was the
fate of Maggie Abbott. In February shed

persuaded both Roeg and Bowie to work together.

In March shed negotiated with Michael Lippman,
who demanded a large fee but was negotiated
down. Around June, she gave a joint party for
David and Charlotte Rampling in LA. Then in July,
she heard that she had been barred from the New
Mexico set. The woman whod made the movie
possible didnt see Bowie for another ten years,
when she bumped into him at another movie
industry party. In true Hollywood fashion, to avoid
losing face, Abbott pretended I didnt know him.
He did the same.
Geoff MacCormack accompanied Bowie and
Coco Schwab to New Mexico, where he was
given a sinecure as Davids body double. The
three spent a healthy few weeks at the Albuquerque
Hilton and later in Santa Fe, relaxing and
sightseeing in the run-up to the filming; David used
the break to start painting during peaceful
afternoons in the conservatory of his rented ranchstyle bungalow. Over the course of just a couple of
weeks he visibly filled out, and his skin regained
some of its natural glow. Roeg was worried about

Davids weight fluctuating, should he binge on

cocaine, and there seems to have been an
understanding that David would not indulge during
the shoot. When Bowie did succumb, Roeg
decided not to react, and to see where the
ambiguity of the situation would take them. I did
not do or say anything. You cant reason someone
out of anything. Im not into the guilt thing or trying
to cure anybody of our humanity everybody has a
sense of shame, guilt, secret happiness, accusation
or praise. There are certain things I wouldnt want
to know about someone anyway, and I wouldnt
want them to know certain things about me. It all
goes back to this idea of exposing yourself. You
have to live with yourself first.
With its echoes of Howard Hughes, and of
Davids own life, The Man Who Fell to Earth
seemed, for all its art-house values and rarefied
conceptualising, simple in tone. The movie was
totally reliant on Bowies charisma and his
vulnerability. Leading woman Candy Clarke was
Roegs partner; being directed in her sex scenes
with Bowie by Roeg was something she says Roeg

got a kick out of. You English people can be very

kinky. Clarkes own recollections of her leading
man focus exclusively on his physicality. He was
so perfect for the role that it was very easy to
imagine he was from another planet he was
beautiful, really at the height of his beauty. Really
thick hair, dyed that lovely colour, and his skin
was just gorgeous. Her memories seem to involve
scant sense of Bowies fragility, but for one
instance, when hed drunk some milk, saw
something in it and then got sick. (His absence
meant that Clarke had to record one key scene
where Newton reveals his alien, genital-free body,
and Candys character pisses her pants solo.)
Otherwise, Clarke recalls Bowies condition as
surprisingly robust; when, at the end of the movie,
Mary-Lou lifts Newton from the floor and places
him gently on the bed, Clarke attempted to lift him
up only to find he was very heavy I couldnt
budge him. The crew had to rig up a seat, mounted
on to a skateboard, to allow her to move the
apparently emaciated entity.
On its release in May 1976, The Man Who Fell

to Earth would be mostly eulogised by critics.

Roeg has done it again, proclaimed the
Guardian. Bowies crucial role won a nearunanimously warm reception: The New Yorker s
legendary critic Pauline Kael pronounced the plot
uninvolving, but praised Bowie as the most
romantic figure in recent pictures.
David himself was confident, once the movie
had wrapped, that it would launch him as not just a
movie actor but as a multimedia creative force.
The formidable focus with which he approached
his next project seemed to vindicate his view, as
did the success of Young Americans a slow
burner, but a commercial breakthrough in the US,
winning gold status from the Recording Industry
Association of America for 500,000 sales in July,
with the single Fame hitting number one on 20
September. The significance was not lost on
David, who was still gently reminding writers of
this breakthrough, five months later. And as Fame
ascended the charts, David was already crafting a
follow-up album.

Station to Station is usually regarded as the

climax of David Bowies love affair with Freuds
magical substance, as well as his definitive
statement on his rootless, confused existence in
Los Angeles. Yet it was more complex than that,
for the album was an almost scientific experiment
in risk-taking: one of its key features, he told those
around him, was to walk into the studio with no
songs prepared. Station to Station was also a love
letter to Europe, and would be a remarkably
coherent statement from a man whose grip on
reality was intermittent. Just a few months later,
Bowie would describe the attraction of watching
artists crack open a bit and seeing what theyre
really like inside. For the first time in years,
underneath the clinical precision, the listener
would find the real David Jones, devoid of masks,
looking down into the abyss, and upwards in
search of that Godhead feeling.
There were brief rehearsals in LA before the
album not to work up material, but to get loose,
says guitarist Earl Slick before the small crew of
Bowie, Alomar and Slick, bassist George Murray

and drummer Dennis Davis convened in Cherokee

Studios, a twenty-four-track facility that offered far
more scope for experimentation than the sixteentrack set-up at Sigma. And this, Bowie told his
musicians, was the ethos of the album:
Experimentation and dont worry about how
long it takes, according to Carlos Alomar. This
would be a journey into sound.
The consistent reports that the album was
recorded amid a blizzard of cocaine do indeed ring
true. Bowie later remarked he could remember
nothing of its making. These were indeed weird
times says Earl Slick, then just twenty-three years
old. Slicks tough, gnarly guitar is a centrepiece of
the album, winding in and out of Alomars lithe,
complementary melodies. Although most of the
band remained in the studio for the early sessions,
often they would be parachuted in and out, unsure
of precisely what they were contributing to. I was
at the Rainbow on Sunset I thought I had the night
off, says Slick, and I was in a state as usual. I
lived in a state. Then Tony, the maitre d said,
Somebody is trying to find you, so I got on the

phone and they need me in the studio. Its about

fucking midnight and Im trashed and I worked
until whenever we finished putting a solo down.
The state of stretching the mind until it cracked
was an intrinsic part of Station to Station; but
whats surprising, in retrospect, is that this state
was conscious. Bowie seemed to weave in and out
of it, relishing the effect both of being trashed, and
in control. Blues writer and producer Neil Slaven
by now had the quintessentially seventies job of
star-minder, travelling with Glenn Hughes, charged
with the futile task of keeping him off cocaine, and
was therefore one of the few straight people on
the scene. In the studio, despite the omnipresent
huge bag of coke on the mixing desk, David was
completely rational. When Slaven mentioned that
the topic of their last conversation, back in 1972,
was Buddhism, David became enthused. Oh,
youll like this then, he told him, before handing
over a sheet of yellow exercise paper with the
lyrics of a new song, Word on a Wing. At times,
Slaven looked at David, with his striking orange
Weimar hair, and got the overwhelming impression

of Im hiding behind this. But you can see me,

cant you? For all the decadent veneer, David was
obviously the same singer Slaven had seen at
Decca in 1967, spreading out gravel on the studio
floor, revelling in the attention. If hed ever
worried that his sanity could fracture for ever, like
Terrys, then this experiment with his own psyche
suggested his mind remained intact, behind the
cracked facade. Glenn Hughes, too, recalls that
despite all the drugs on display, David was
running the show. I was blown away by that. My
mind would be all over the place when I was
doing drugs, but he had total command of the sound
and this understanding of the musicians, it was
like watching the greatest football manager in
action.
There were other crucial, perhaps surprising,
influences. Carlos Alomar had been back working
in New York when he got the call. His lifestyle
was essentially wholesome and straight during the
recording. Told that the keyword was
experimentation with no time limits, one of his
key motivations on the self-consciously epic title

track was his session-mans knowledge that If a

song is over three minutes you make double the
royalty Glory Glory! As he and the rhythm
section experimented with the opening section of
Station to Station, messing around and adding
muso tricks (I was listening to Jethro Tull at the
time, says Alomar), Bowie instantly seized on a
disquieting turnaround in the rhythm, with a bar of
3/4 and then 5/4 to disorientate the listener, a progrock technique which rendered the introduction
jarring and disturbing, preparing the listener for
lyrics which are similarly grandiose but sinister.
The songs mention of White Stains invokes
one of Crowleys most obscure works, a collection
of pornographic poems hed written under the
pseudonym George Archibald Bishop. One
magical movement, from Kether to Malkuth is a
reference to the kabbalistic tree of life: Kether is
the sphere of Godhead, Malkuth the sphere of the
physical world. Some commentators, notably
writer Ian MacDonald, believe Bowies
understanding of the kabbalistic system drew on
works like The Tree of Life , by Crowleys pupil

Israel Regardie, and see something of the dark in

Bowies mindset a plausible interpretation,
given Bowies enduring interest in the Thule
Society a German occultist group and other
esoteric Nazi philosophies. Yet Station to Station
is capable of wonderfully diverse interpretations.
It could represent absolute megalomania; that
Bowie is a God who has chosen to embrace the
physical world. The kabbala reference could
equally signify that Bowie has renounced the high
of chemically derived nirvana in order to savour
everyday existence. The song is also capable of
being read as a song of sensual love, in which case
the European canon becomes a bad pun.
Yet despite the train sounds that open the record,
Station to Station also featured Christian imagery
at its core, for its title alluded, David would later
confirm, to the Stations of the Cross. A similar
yearning for salvation pervades Word on a Wing;
almost conventionally Christian, it was written at a
time when David started wearing a crucifix, given
to him by Michael Lippman. Later he would wear
one his father had given him in his teens. They

werent just empty symbols; over time he would

describe himself as not religious Im a spiritual
person. I believe a man develops a relationship
with his own God.
Glenn Hughes, who has never previously spoken
in detail of his deep, but troubled friendship with
Bowie, believes that David had sent himself on a
journey deep into the cocaine mindset in order to
create new territory for his art. Bowie had never
really suffered for his music before; not like Iggy,
or Vince Taylor mocked and vilified by the
masses. But in LA, he had staked out his soul under
the unrelenting California sun. His period of hell,
as Hughes puts it. Because that stuff did have its
way with him. It twisted and turned him inside
out.
Some songs were cooked up in the simplest of
fashions: early in the sessions David bashed out
the simplest two-chord progression on the piano
and told Carlos it was a new song; only then did
they realise the simple F sharpE riff and melody
was uncomfortably close to George Bensons
version of On Broadway. Alomar transformed

the rhythm with a springy, funky riff based on Cliff

Nobles classic Philly-soul instrumental, The
Horse, while Davids lyrics and optimistic doowop vibe came straight from The Diamonds
Happy
Years.
Bowies
pitch-perfect,
multitracked vocals were added in a quick
sequence of mostly first takes, aided by Geoff
MacCormack, and that, with the brief addition of a
breathy melodica here, and a chirruping vibra-slap
there, was that. Beautifully simple, Golden Years
transcended its influences, another perfect example
of how talent borrows, and genius steals.
With just six songs, Station to Station was both
sprawling and coherent; it would stand alone in his
work, the perfect gateway between American and
European music. The turnaround it represented
with the David Bowie of Ziggy Stardust the man
who arrived in the studio with a dozen songs,
written and fully rehearsed was complete. This
was not an exercise in songwriting: this was a
sculpture, carved out of sound. In less than three
years, David had not just changed genres; he had
completely changed his working methods, from

start to finish. This was the embodiment of the

advice hed given to Glenn Hughes, earlier that
year. Do the contrary action do something
youre not used to. Lets not make it comfortable
lets make it uncomfortable. Station to Stations
chart performance was perhaps the ultimate
vindication of this advice, peaking at number three
after its release in January 1976: the critical
reception, too, was respectful, recognising the
bravery with which Bowie had staked out new
territory.
Yet the fate of Davids next recording showed
the downside of his high-risk approach. Since
signing up for The Man Who Fell to Earth, David
had seen the challenge of composing its soundtrack
as an intrinsic part of the projects appeal. Around
November, he started work on the project,
partnered by Paul Buckmaster, whod arranged the
strings on Space Oddity. Alomar, Dennis Davis
and George Murray were called in for some of the
recording, augmented by J. Peter Robinson on
piano. Roughly six pieces were recorded, two of
them funky-ish rock instrumentals, a ballad

instrumental, later named Subterraneans, and

Wheels, which had a gentle sort of melancholy
mood to it, says Buckmaster. The recording,
however, stretched on. Assembling a soundtrack
required focus and discipline. Both were lacking
and, according to Buckmaster, it just wasnt up to
the standard needed.
According to Buckmaster, Bowies soundtrack
never approached a finished state. Yet Roeg and
producer Si Litvinoff considered what they heard
brilliant, says the latter, but [producer Michael]
Deeley tried to get David to accept a lesser deal
and was told to take a walk. To me this was a
large disappointment. Litvinoff believes the
movie would have been a much hotter commercial
proposition with Davids music and considered the
replacement, by John Phillips, only adequate.
Bowie, meanwhile, was humiliated and blamed
Michael Lippman for the fiasco. Lippman had also
made the mistake of building himself an impressive
new house that autumn, partly financed with an
(agreed) loan from David.
By Christmas, Lippman was out. Most of those

who knew him considered him diligent and kind;

he lacked the killer instinct of Tony Defries, but
would go on to have a more long-term career in
management, managing both George Michael and
Matchbox Twentys Rob Thomas. Guitarist Earl
Slick, also managed by Lippman, fell foul of the
messy split, and was left behind when David left
for Ochos Rios in Jamaica to rehearse for Station
to Stations upcoming tour.
The preparations provided another reminder, if
one were needed, that for all his Third Reich
fetishes and pharmaceutical peculiarities, David
Bowie remained the consummate pro. Geoff
MacCormack saw his friend in January: hed put
on weight, had a personal trainer and a suntan. He
was not perfect, but he was better. Later that
year, in Paris, he would meet Bob Grace, a key
architect of his Hunky Dory breakthrough. Id
missed him, so we had a nice dinner and caught
up, says Grace. He told me, Ive got over all my
cocaine stuff now. And I said, Hows that? And
he said, I took that image off. I put it in a
wardrobe in an LA hotel room and locked the

door.
Grace saw a man whod simply decided to
abandon his wicked ways, then had done so. Such
transformations are rare, and indeed Davids
second interview with Cameron Crowe, conducted
in February 1976, was riddled with megalomaniac
statements, such as, Id adore to be prime
minister. And, I believe very strongly in fascism
I dream of buying companies and TV stations,
owning and controlling them. Complete with
approving namechecks for Nietzsche and Hitler, it
made for great press to launch his tour. Yet Ben
Edmonds, the one-time editor of Creem, met the
singer in the same week as Crowe, and observed
he was not fucked up at all, not in the slightest if
anything, he was like a businessman in drag. The
two spent much of their conversation talking about
their mutual friend, Iggy Pop. For a few moments,
Bowies professional veneer softened as he
discussed his one-time protg, a man who is not
so hard and all-knowing and cynical. Every artist
always knows the answers of the world. Its nice
to see someone who hasnt a clue but has

insights.
Bowies comments were more perceptive than
anyone could imagine, because at that precise
moment Iggy indeed did not have a clue. Since
walking out on Bowie, he had deteriorated from
being a figure of ridicule on the strip, to a twilight
existence, sharing an abandoned garage with a
male hustler called Bruce, sleeping on a stolen
lounger mattress. Thrown in jail after shoplifting
some cheese and apples, Iggy found hed run out of
all his friends but one Freddy Sessler. And the
man whod helped bring Bowie down, raised Iggy
up. Sessler stood bail for the singer, and hired him
for a telephone scam hed cooked up. Then, when
Iggy proved a lousy telemarketer, Sessler
suggested a solution. Look, you better call David.
I know he likes you and wants to work with you.
But I had too much pride, says Iggy today.
Then a few days later Freddy tells me, Im going
to see David, I told him I was with you and he
said, Bring Iggy along.
The pair met up in San Diego. David was kind
genuinely so, for there was no hint of

condescension in his offer to make an album with

Iggy in Europe. In future months, many would
comment on the amazing turnaround in Iggys
fortunes. Fewer people would realise that their
friendship would mark just as profound a change in
Bowies life. In tending to Iggy, David would heal
himself, too.

15
Ghosts in the Echo Chambers
The guy has a lot of psychic stamina he
was perfectly able to go out and do the
gigs, drive the entire continent by car,
then go out to a club after almost every
one until four in the morning, and do all
the other things. And he never showed
bad form, even once.
Iggy Pop

For all the icy grandiosity of the Station to Station

tour undoubtedly the most intense performances
David had put on since Spiders days there was
something cosy, almost domestic about the small
retinues daily routine. The tiny group revolved
around David and his new best friend, Jimmy, as

he always called Iggy Pop. Usually, on the long

drives between shows, the pair would sit in the
back of Davids car, the faithful Tony Mascia at
the wheel, as David cued up his current musical
obsessions on cassette, and the two of them
exchanged their reactions and insights. Often
theyd talk late into the night; at other times, theyd
sit silently, sipping espressos and reading without
feeling obliged to chat, like old men whod been
friends for decades.
The two were figureheads of a cosy travelling
household. Barbara Dewitt sister of
photographer Bruce Weber, and one-time head of
publicity at United Artists looked after Davids
press, while Andrew Kent, whod shot an amazing
portfolio of Iggy during his grandiose selfimmolation with The Stooges, was in-house
photographer. Corinne, and Pat Gibbons,
previously with MainMan, looked after most of the
administration. This tiny crew would ultimately
form the basis of Bowies management
organisation, Isolar. Davids focus and attention to
detail were simply phenomenal, Iggy observed.

The guy has a lot of psychic stamina he was

perfectly able to go out and do the gigs, drive the
entire continent by car, then go out to a club after
almost every one until four in the morning, and do
all the other things. And he never showed bad
form, even once.
Asked if David was psychically damaged, Iggy
replies, Of course he was but he wasnt gonna
show it. There were certain quirky, odd, theatrical,
slightly megalomanic ways of, er, relating but I
was used to that, cos I got some of that myself. It
was not until a short break in the tour in May that
David mentioned any of his troubles. In the
meantime, he was relentlessly professional:
always enthusiastic, efficiently checking through
transparencies to be released to the press, and
above all fired up by music, playing his friend
pioneering records by Tom Waits, Kraftwerk and
even The Ramones the latter, he told Iggy, was a
sign that the world had not forgotten The Stooges.
Carlos Alomar saw the two talking and noticed
their joint explorations somehow had a calming
effect. They were similar, but different, just like

when you split an atom and its twins.

There
was
something
marvellously
instantaneous about Iggy and Davids new, deep
friendship. In some respects it was completely
bizarre. I really didnt have a reference for why
they were friends, says Carlos Alomar. Nor were
they musical friends. Both men were enormously
narcissistic, and had proved irredeemably selfish
over the previous year, yet each was supportive
and kind to the other. Iggy didnt make special
claims on David, nor did he abase himself. There
was no kow-towing, or humbling, says Alomar. If
others complained about Davids behaviour, and
Iggy could do something, he would. But when
necessary, hed be brutally honest with those who
asked for his intercession. Thats how it is, hed
tell complainers, just deal with it.
In part, each ones frank admiration for the other
was driven by the fact they were almost polar
opposites: They each want what the other one
has, says a mutual friend, Eric Schermerhorn. Yet
each of their characters was widely
misunderstood. Bowie was the supposed middle-

class intellectual; yet it was Iggy in the guise of

Jimmy Osterberg, school debate champion
whod been voted Most Likely to Succeed by his
Junior High School classmates, and made it to
university. And Iggy was the wild man: yet it was
Bowie whod push himself, and others, well
outside their comfort zones.
There was a simple reason, beyond the cosy
family atmosphere, for the air of relative
tranquillity that was evident throughout the thirtynine arena shows of the US leg, which ran through
to 26 March, 1976. That reason was illustrated by
the fourth date on the tour, in San Francisco. When
David had played the city back in October 1972,
amid all of MainMans hype and bluster, the
Winterland had been embarrassingly empty. Now,
the same citys Cow Palace was filled with 14,000
adoring fans. Speaking to Melody Makers Robert
Hillburn, David described himself as at peace,
drawing a simple satisfaction from a job well
done, rather than the false gaiety of the Ziggy
days. In its place was a genuine gaiety, a delight at
the after-show-party presence of celebrities like

David Hockney and Christopher Isherwood, who

came, says Andrew Kent, to pay homage after the
LA show. Davids conversation with Isherwood
inspired a plan for David to base himself in Berlin;
hed already thought about working in Germany,
studying the recordings of engineers like Konrad
Connie Plank, as well as his current musical
obsession, Kraftwerk. Before the tour started, he
had agreed to the suggestion of Angie, and his
lawyer, to move to Switzerland for tax reasons. By
the time the tour reached New York in March, he
had confided to all his friends that he was planning
to live in Germany, and record there with Iggy.
Only Angie was kept in the dark about the scheme.
On the 26 March, the US leg of the Station to
Station tour concluded with a masterful
performance at Madison Square Garden, followed
by a star-packed party at the Penn Plaza Club.
David and Iggy spent most of the evening huddled
together, both of them graciously greeting old
friends like John Cale. The pair positively glowed
with health Jimmy wearing a suit which hed just
bought for a court appearance with Bowie the

previous day in Rochester, New York, to answer

charges following a marijuana bust at the Flagship
American hotel. A mug shot of Bowie survives in
the Rochester Police Department files, and is a
classic of its genre: David impeccably suited,
gazing at the camera with clear-eyed sang-froid.
Perhaps his serenity reflected the irony of the fact
that one of the music industrys best-known
cocaine-abusers had been caught with a soft drug
that rarely figured on his own esoteric menu. The
charges were later dropped.
Both Iggy and David had, by this time, agreed
that theyd both leave their drug habits behind in
LA; the agreement was never formal, and theyd
both lapse at various times, but a measure of their
success came when Iggy stayed on in New York
for a couple of days after David and Coco Schwab
sailed for Cannes on 27 March. For the first time,
he realised The Stooges legacy had influenced a
new generation of New York bands; and for the
first time, he turned down a sniff of heroin, offered
to him by ex-New York Doll, Johnny Thunders.

When the party reunited in early April, David had

hatched a rationale for a move to Berlin, in the
form of a movie to be scripted by Christopher
Isherwood. Im supposed to be living in
Switzerland but I dont know how long that will
last, he told Radio Ones Stuart Grundy. Ive got
to come back to Berlin. Later that same evening,
on 10 April, nightclub entertainer Romy Haag
turned up for his show at Berlins
Deutschlandhalle.
Nearly six feet tall and drop-dead gorgeous,
Romys
deliciously
indefinable
sexuality
embodied the vibrant, fragile glamour of pre-war
Berlin that Christopher Isherwood had so
compellingly recorded in the books that David had
been reading in the last few weeks. Born Edouard
Frans Verbaarsschott in The Hague, Romy had
opened her own nightclub, Chez Romy Haag, just
two years earlier, and established herself as
Berlins most glamorous woman, despite the
accident of having been born a man. Romy brought
a posse of her dancers and entertainers to the
show; they made a dazzling spectacle, and

according to Haag, We looked at each other and

that was that. The next day he had a concert in
Hamburg and he was four hours late because he
didnt want to leave. Thereafter, Romy became
one of the many friends with whom David would
spend hours chatting on the phone late into the
night.
The European tour dates were a sensation; the
set itself, opening with a grinding, thrilling version
of Station to Station, was sprawling but tough,
seemingly anticipating the musical changes that
were in the air in 1976. Yet it was Davids
emergence from nearly two years in American
limbo that was the main attraction.
His arresting, glamorous, Thin White Duke
persona was an intrinsic part of his appeal,
especially because this was the first time hed hit
the stage in Britain since Ziggys farewell. The
contrast between Ziggys femininity and the Dukes
masculine, 1930s neatness and fetching Weimar
haircut could not have been more pronounced. The
hint of depravity behind the neat, crisp white shirt
and waistcoats was erotic, reminiscent of the

thinking womans forbidden crumpet, Amon Gth

i n Schindlers List . Perhaps his most drop-dead
glamorous look to date, Bowies European
superman persona was carefully judged; it
signalled his focus over the coming years, which
was to build up a fanbase on the continent. David
Bowies previous tours had, incredibly,
overlooked the European market; now the string of
shows at huge arenas showed the pent-up demand,
all spread by word of mouth.
As the tour moved on from Germany to Bern,
Switzerland, on 17 April, there was a short
layover in Zurich. Intent on building on his Ziggyera experiences on the Trans Siberian Express he
announced a move into travel writing, yet another
project floated and abandoned David asked
photographer Andy Kent to sort out the paperwork
for a trip to Moscow, before their next date in
Helsinki on 24 April.
The journey was packed with unforgettable
moments. On the 21st, there was a little party to
celebrate Iggys twenty-ninth birthday; David
presented him with a Polaroid camera to record

their three-day trip. Once the small party David,

Iggy, Kent, Corinne and Pat Gibbons reached
Poland, the train clattered more slowly through an
increasingly bleak landscape, and the five
voyagers spent hours gazing at buildings pockmarked by machine-gun bullets, or the gaunt
remains of towns still shattered by bomb damage.
The train stopped every now and then to pick up
bottles of brown beer, or the soup and peas that
were the only food on offer. Pulling up alongside a
goods train in Warsaw, they witnessed a grey-clad
worker throwing lumps of coal up from a flatcar,
piece by piece, while sleet rattled against the
windows of their own train. An unforgettably
dreary image, it would later be evoked in the
haunting instrumental Warszawa.
For most of the trip, the small party managed to
evade official scrutiny by travelling as
conventional tourists, but when the passengers
transferred to a wide-gauge train at Brest, on the
Russian border, they were met by the KGB and
ordered to pick up two suitcases each and follow
the officer to the huge interrogation room. Then a

guy who spoke English came up and said, and it

was bone chilling, We werent expecting you,
says Kent.
Kent had a copy of Playboy confiscated; Iggy
attracted special suspicion for attempted bribery,
because hed impulsively given away the flowers
that decorated their cabin. David had a large trunk
full of books which the KGB rifled through, taking
one, maybe two away, says Kent. The offending
volumes were on that subject the Third Reich
but their removal did not cause any specific
concern; instead, their worries centred on the
travel documents that the border guards studied
intently then reluctantly conceded were in order.
The small party breathed a sigh of relief as their
passports and forms were handed back to them.
Then, ominously, one burly, blond-haired official,
who they took to be KGB, closed their encounter
with the words, Someone will be there to meet
you in Moscow.
They spent the next few hours chatting
nervously, wondering what the KGB had in store
for them. But, incredibly, once they pulled into

Moscows opulent, marble-lined Belorusskaya

station, the platform was empty: Big Brother, as so
often, was not as efficient as claimed, and they
were free to explore. After dropping their luggage
off at the Metropol a sumptuous, historic Art
Nouveau building which was the setting of several
key Lenin speeches, as well as Bulgakovs sinister
novel The Master and Margarita they wandered
across Red Square, posing like happy schoolkids
alongside Russian conscripts, then on to a
shopping trip at the huge, glass-roofed GUM
department store for tourist trinkets, and dinner
back at the Metropol.
Their frolic in Moscow lasted just seven hours
before they caught the train out but they had not
seen the end of Soviet bureaucracy, for on the way
to Helsinki, the border guards chose to strip-search
both David and Iggy. Both of them were
unperturbed by the experience, which was blown
up into a manufactured furore about David having
disappeared. I dont know if it was a publicity
stunt or not but it was a great one if it was, says
Kent. The next publicity stunt was not so easily

explained, namely Davids quote at a press

conference in Stockholm on 24 April that did not
surface until 2 May, when the Station to Station
tour also known as the Isolar tour hit the UK
and David greeted his fans at Victoria station.
Photographs across the media a few days later,
including one by Andrew Kent, were printed with
Davids arm outstretched in what looked like a
Nazi salute. In conjunction with his remarks at the
Stockholm conference one week earlier I
believe Britain could benefit from a fascist leader.
After all, fascism is really nationalism a media
firestorm soon blew up.
Bowie qualified his Stockholm remarks to Jean
Rook in the Daily Express a couple of days later.
If I said it and Ive a terrible feeling I did say
something like it to a Stockholm journalist Im
astounded anyone could believe it Im not
sinister. I dont stand up in cars waving to people
because I think Im Hitler.
Rook found him sincere there was a
schoolboyish earnestness about his demeanour that
enhanced his horror at being so misunderstood. Yet

this was a mealy-mouthed politicians defence; one

he would repeat in later months, when he declared
himself upset or hurt that anyone considered him
racist. Few people did, certainly none of Davids
friends. There was no trace of that, says Ava
Cherry. Im Jewish and I never [suspected] antiSemitic reasons. If Id thought that I would have
quit, says Andrew Kent. Movie footage of
Davids arrival later revealed his so-called Heil
Hitler salute as nothing of the kind. But there were
enough quotes sitting on journalists tape recorders
to demonstrate that, while not a racist, David was
happy to flirt with fascistic imagery in search of a
newspaper headline.
Without doubt, during that sweltering summer of
1976, Bowies fascist chic chimed with sentiments
voiced by some of his rivals. Bromley contingent
figurehead Siouxsie Sioux sneered that there were
too many Jews for my liking in one of the
Banshees earliest songs, Love in a Void, and in
August Eric Clapton ranted that Britain should get
the wogs out, get the coons out. Most of Britains
youth would, rightly, suspect Bowie of cheap

opportunism rather than racism, but that summer

Bowies credibility as a champion of the outsider
took its first severe dent.
Yet by the time the tour wound up in Paris on 18
May, celebrated by a party where David spent
most of his time canoodling with Romy Haag,
those concerns were mostly forgotten, as David
turned his attentions to working with his friend
Iggy. Up to his stay in Paris, David had intended to
work in Munich with his new friend, but a change
of plans was prompted by staff at the Chteau
DHrouville, the residential recording studio
where David had recorded Pin Ups. Commercial
manager Pierre Calamel and studio manager
Laurent Thibault, the new regime at the studio,
astutely calculated that Bowie might need a refuge
from the French fans crowding around the Plaza
Athene hotel, and invited him back to the
eighteenth-century Chteau, set in the rolling
countryside of the Oise valley, an hours drive out
of Paris. Enticed by Calamels offer of some
peace and some French cheese, Bowie arrived
that afternoon, wearing a flat cap, accompanied by

Iggy, and deployed his natural gentlemanly charm,

inhaling deeply to take in the distinctive smell of
the grand old building and announcing to Iggy,
This is a great rock n roll studio.
After a long lie-in although David woke up in
the night and was found wandering the grounds,
confused and naked but for a forties-style Burberry
Macintosh Bowie called a meeting with Laurent
Thibault. Hed brought a huge case over full of
albums, which he played through, critiquing each
of them, including a couple by Thibaults previous
band, Magma, before announcing that in a couple
of days he was taking a trip to his new house in
Switzerland, but hed return in a matter of weeks to
produce Iggys solo album, and would use Thibault
as engineer. Later, it transpired that a crucial
sweetener for using the Chteau was the prospect
that David and Iggys living costs would be picked
up by a record company: David had no cash for
day-to-day expenses. With the flow of MainManera royalties staunched, and imminent legal
disputes with Michael Lippman, he was forced to
watch every penny. Over subsequent weeks,

onlookers would be astonished to see Corinne

reprimanding David for spending 100 francs on a
new jacket; when he came to settle the bill for
Iggys recording, Davids cheque bounced.
In Switzerland, Angie had taken great care in
selecting the first marital home the couple would
actually own. The move was perhaps an act of
self-deception, given that she and David had been
living apart for two years, with Zowie under the
care of the redoubtable Marion Skene. Yet David
had continued to maintain that deception in print,
telling Cameron Crowe in February that Angie was
remarkably pleasant to keep coming back to. And,
for me, she always will be. Believing that her
problem-solving abilities would continue to
endear her to her husband, Angie had steered her
way through the Swiss bureaucracy, investigating
the various tax and residency issues, convinced
that with this feat, as with so many others, she
could prove herself indispensable. Clos des
Msanges was a luxurious house, with seven
bedrooms and a caretakers lodge, set in several

acres of land in the village of Blonay, just above

Lake Geneva. Her efforts were wasted: the first
home she jointly owned with her husband would
be the last. When he arrived in Switzerland, David
took one look at the house, exchanged only a few
vague words, and then disappeared. As so often,
Angie swung from exhilaration to near depression,
and soon started looking for the villain in the
scheme, not for the first time alighting on Coco
Schwab. Undoubtedly there was little love lost
between the two women; but Corinne was in
essence a convenient scapegoat, for Davids
dissatisfaction with his marriage had predated
Cocos arrival on the scene. In any case, Angies
suspicions that her marriage was doomed were
correct, for it was during his brief stay in
Switzerland that David, who had so far kept
remarkably quiet about his problems with both
Angie and Michael Lippman, first confided in Iggy,
discussing the future without being too specific.
Hes English, says Iggy, by way of explanation,
reserved and all that. Within a couple of days the
pair, along with Coco, set off again for the

Chteau, probably stopping off in Berlin for some

flat-hunting en route.
By the end of May, David was in the Chteau for
the sessions, concentrating all of his focus on Iggy.
The album would be based around Sister
Midnight, a song hed written with Carlos
Alomar, and had played Iggy within a couple of
days of their meeting in February, telling him how
hed love to put together a solo album based on a
similar dark, electronic groove. It was a long way
from The Stooges, but Iggy instantly responded to
the challenge, realising that in its minimal, robotic
way, it boasted a unique power. For me it was
perfect! And I loved it, when I heard it I went
whoa. And there wasnt one stinker on that whole
period, he only pitched me great balls and I
grabbed every one.
If there is any period in David Bowies
songwriting that is under-appreciated, it is this
one. The music was once again flowing out of him,
and behind the twisted, distorted facade of The
Idiot, the subtlety and deftness of Davids craft

was at a latter-day peak. Most songs were

sketched out with Davids electric piano and
guitar, augmented by Laurent Tibo playing
scratch bass. Brittany session-man Michel
Santangeli did the same for the drum parts; David
would keep whatever bits he liked and augment
them with other musicians later. Bowie had
explained to Jimmy back in the spring that this
would be a chance for him to explore concepts he
planned to use in his own work, yet Iggy would
also get the benefit of songs, like China Girl and
Nightclubbing, which were more commercial
than anything David had kept in stock for himself.
The pair made an engaging, odd couple: David
with his severe, Germanic haircut, focusing
intently on the music, sitting in a lotus position on a
chair by the console; Jimmy, blond haired,
spreading out like a lizard on the floor amid sheafs
of lyrics, or bouncing around the grounds like an
enthusiastic puppy when David was busy in the
control room. Zowie played in the grounds,
accompanied by Marion Skene, or other kids from
the studio household. Davids old friend Daniella

Parmar showed up at one point to add to the family

vibe; Angie, of course, was absent. With Corinne
following David around all-purpose factotum,
helper and lover and Iggy sunbathing by the pool,
there was an intriguing, warped domesticity about
the setup. The impression was heightened by
incidents like the time Iggy took a day out to see
his old flame, Nico, in Paris. The Velvets
chanteuse was known to be a diehard of the
Parisian heroin scene, so Iggy or a minder had to
call in regularly to reassure Coco he wasnt high,
like a teenager calling home.
David was sweet with Zowie, less distracted
than in the Ziggy days. For the French staff, his
lack of physical affection with Zowie for he was
not a tactile person raised eyebrows, then was
dismissed as typically English which indeed it
was. He didnt cuddle Zowie, but when he was
with him, he gave him his full attention. One day in
the dining room the staff saw David and his son
chatting away; Zowie was drinking a coke, when
his dad joked, Youll get paranoid if you drink
that. Instantly the five-year old responded, Well,

no one believes what a paranoid person says,

anyway. Bowie laughed proudly at his sons quip;
it sounded as if paranoia was a regular subject for
fatherson repartee.
In the opulent surroundings of the Chteau,
David took to the role of le grand seigneur,
politely asking if he could have the largest room,
with fireplace, as well as a stereo. His polite
requests were invariably repeated, more
forcefully, by Coco, who initially irritated the staff
before they realised she had no life and
sympathised with her self-imposed slavery. The
Chteaus owner, composer Michel Magne, had let
his musician friend Jacques Higelin take up one
wing of the building, along with his girlfriend
Kuelan Nguyen and three-year-old son Ken. A
brief affair between Kuelan and Iggy added to the
edge and intensity of The Idiot sessions, and
within its first few days was immortalised when
Iggy re-wrote one of Davids songs, Borderline,
to become China Girl whose lyrics
simultaneously implored Kuelan to come with him
to Berlin and warned her away. David seemed to

savour the energy and vitality that their affair

represented; he, too, focused on Kuelan, rubbing
her back flirtatiously, or puffing on the pipe hed
lately taken to smoking, enjoying the ambiguity of
the situation: Its good for Jimmys heart to be
loved that way, he told Kuelan, almost like a
father giving his consent.
Gossip from this period has David as a cocaineraddled paranoid wreck perhaps the best
apocryphal story has him abandoning a session
after Iggy invoked occult forces by pushing him in
the pool but throughout the recording, Davids
main vices were beer and women. It was only
when rival musicians arrived, say the staff, that the
atmosphere soured. There were rows, inspired by
old rivalries, when Bad Company prepared to
move into the studio; Edgar Froese was also frozen
out, after arriving at the Chteau to add some
synthesiser parts. Called up to the control room,
Froese listened to a rough mix, then over dinner
confided to David, At first I didnt really like
your record but finally I know you are making
very interesting things. I am very proud to be here.

Casually, David told him theyd call down later

for him to record. Several hours had passed when
Pierre Calamel went to check on Froese, who was
still sitting near the pool. I came over and said,
Are you OK? Do you want something more to
drink? It was a sunny, very hot day and I moved
the parasol because the guy is getting very pink.
And they didnt call him up. I was very sorry for
him.
When the time came for Froeses flight back to
Berlin, the Chteau staff ordered a taxi, and the
Tangerine Dream founder left without a backward
glance.
The surreal atmosphere of The Idiot sessions
was even more obvious once David and Iggy left
the Chteau to make room for Bad Company. Their
next studio, Musicland, had been built in the
basement of a Munich hotel and mall; Thin Lizzy
were recording there by day, Iggy and David
would piece together their gothic soundscapes by
night.
Guitarist Phil Palmer was called to the phone
late one night by his mum, and spoke to a polite,

charming David, who asked him to bring his

Telecaster and hop on a plane to Munich. Palmer
found the nocturnal, subterranean sessions
disconcerting, vampiric would be the word.
Davids instructions were more psychological than
musical: Imagine youre walking down Wardour
Street and as youre walking past each club youre
inspired to play whats coming out of it. That
would be the most specific instruction hed get
throughout the recording. The sessions were
experimental on every level, says Palmer, with
the pair pushing him for more extreme guitar
sounds, asking if he would like to order in any
sheep brains to eat, or leafing through monographs
by artists such as Egon Schiele and Eric Heckel:
They were very supportive of each other, and just
having fun. And they were obviously
experienced in some pretty weird stuff. I wasnt
aware they were taking anything but their minds
were a little odd.
Engineer Thibault relished the experimentation,
crafting long tape loops into electronic collages,
but the nocturnal existence eventually took its toll

as they concluded the mix. One night, frazzled,

while David was out of the room, he crafted an
Indian head-dress out of strips of red leader tape
and attached it to his head. David returned, said
not a word at this ludicrous spectacle, but then
disappeared to use the phone. Its likely that this
was the moment David called Tony Visconti in
London to ask him to assist on his own album,
which he planned to start work on directly after
The Idiot.
It was around 20 August, 1976, that Tony Visconti
arrived at 155, Hauptstrasse, a typical altbau, or
period apartment, set on a tree-lined twin-lane
avenue in Schneberg, an anonymous district in the
southwest of Berlin. Bowie had told him Iggy was
living with him; Visconti knocked on the door,
hugged his old friend, said hello to Coco, whom he
knew from Davids skeletoid Young Americans
period. Then David said, This is Jimmy. So I
shake his hand and look around and say, Great
wheres Iggy? Everyone laughed, it kinda broke
the ice.

The session had originally been booked for

some preparatory work on the The Man Who Fell
to Earth tapes from Cherokee; when they were
delayed, Visconti helped put the finishing touches
to Iggys album at Hansa Studio 1, on the
Kurfrstendamm. Throughout the process, says
Visconti, You could see David evolving and
developing his next phase from this strange
record. Over the same fortnight, Visconti was
plunged into another thrilling, confusing new
world. One thing about David is that hes not a
workaholic. He really loves to explore his
environment.
In that first stay, Visconti lodged at the
Schlosshotel Gerhus, a magnificent, decayed
building once owned by art collector Walter Graf
von Pannwitz. Theyd work at Hansa Studio 1 in
the afternoons, then in the evenings go to Romy
Haags or some dungeon club, says Visconti.
Bowie was keen to share the experience of Haags
club. It was oddly wholesome: It wasnt really a
gay thing, there were kids there as well as grownups, it was just part of their cabaret culture. Even

if you couldnt speak German you could get off on

the cabaret. Romy was about six-foot tall and
couldnt possibly have been a woman, which
added to the mystique, and wed [always] get the
best table.
Schneberg embodied the contradictory nature
of Davids fascination with Berlin. Five minutes
down the road was a huge Nazi bunker on
Pallasstrasse, the site of Goebbels Total War
speech. Another five minutes away was
Christopher
Isherwoods
old
house
on
Nollendorfstrasse the deep, solemn massive
street hed immortalised on the opening page of
Goodbye to Berlin, with its description of young
men whistling up to the women on the upper stories
in hope of an assignation a pastime in which
David, naturally, also indulged. It was indicative
of Davids mindset that he was as interested in the
iconography of Hitlers Berlin as he was in the gay
communities murdered by the Nazis, who were
commemorated by a plaque on Nollendorferplatz,
where David and Jimmy shopped for books or
sipped coffee. Equally, David might visit the

Brcke Museum, study works by Heckel or Ernst

Ludwig Kirchner that the Nazis had declared
degenerate, then wander into antique stores and
examine tickets and leaflets adorned with the telltale sticker that concealed a Swastika.
Jimmy was relaxed about Davids interest in the
Third Reich hardly surprising, given that Iggys
last new work presented on stage had involved him
being whipped by his old bandmate, Ron Asheton,
who was wearing a Nazi uniform complete with
party armband. (Asheton, incidentally, claimed to
have invented the Hitler was the first pop star
line that became a virtual Bowie catchphrase.)
Other friends were equally non-judgemental; one
Jewish acquaintance who knew David through his
time in Berlin points out, He was always
fascinated by it. But the quote David was
stigmatised for, he didnt mean it in a bad way. He
meant [the Nazis] knew how to work the media.
Although convinced David was one of the least
racist people shed ever met, the friend does not
remember him ever explaining his crass statements
only in the later Berlin days, when David had

met pleasant young men whose fathers had served

in the SS, did he fully realise the full implications
of his fixation. It wasnt until 1980 that hed
describe his flirtation with fascist chic as ghastly
stuff. At the same time, in a wide-ranging
interview with Angus MacKinnon for the NME, he
pointed out, quite reasonably, that hed never
shown racism in his personal dealings. But he
didnt apologise.
Tony Visconti had first learned that David was
starting a new album of his own when hed been
called by David and a man he introduced as his
newest collaborator: Brian Eno. They said to me,
What are you going to bring to the table? says
Visconti. It was the first time Id heard that
phrase, which put me on the spot, so I had to think
fast. Famously, Visconti responded that he had
discovered a new digital delay unit, the Eventide
Harmoniser, that could delay a sound, and change
its pitch, independently of each other. His succinct
explanation of the novel unit was that it fucks with
the fabric of time. And he was in.

One other prospective collaborator never made

the session. David had wanted to recruit Michael
Rother from Neu! for the new album, which had the
working title of New Music Night and Day. David
asked a member of his staff to call the guitarist.
Rother said yes; yet somehow German-speaking
RCA staff sabotaged the collaboration, telling him
Rother had declined.
When the sessions convened early in September
at the Chteau DHrouville, all of the musicians
were unsure as to what theyd encounter. Roy
Young, Britains best-known boogie woogie
pianist, had received a phone call from David at
the Speakeasy. It was the second time David had
called Roy had been unable to make the Station
to Station sessions and while David was
effusive, Young had no idea how his piano would
fit in to Bowies music. The same applied to
guitarist Ricky Gardiner, who, like Phil Palmer,
was another Tony Visconti discovery a
replacement for Michael Rother. Young and
Gardiner shared a plane out to Paris, nervously
picking each others brains as to what they would

be faced with.
As it turned out, the sessions were relaxed, with
David sitting on the studio floor, showing Young,
Gardiner, Carlos Alomar, George Murray and
Dennis Davis little riffs, getting them to add their
own feel, open-minded about what theyd come up
with. But it felt strange: asked what his plan was,
David was frank. Im not sure yet, till we develop
it. Brian Eno, who Visconti had been told would
be one of the key collaborators, did not arrive until
later in the session, which increased the nervous
tension. Visconti recalls, We had defined it as an
experiment. Before we went in, we said this might
be a waste of a month of our lives. And it was
three weeks before we knew it was working.
All those present knew David was dealing with
problems, deriving from an imminent legal battle
with Michael Lippman; they sensed his
preoccupation, but shared in the studio
camaraderie. In the early weeks, David was more
ebullient. But when Angie briefly arrived at the
recording with boyfriend Roy Martin to help the
session along, as one wit puts it, there was a huge

fight in one of the rooms and the sound of glasses

being thrown. Iggy and Visconti had to pull Martin
and Bowie apart. David seemed to quite enjoy the
drama, then worked up a groove with the rhythm
section, which became Breaking Glass: Ive
been breaking glass in your room again. The
lyrics also warned Angie not to look at the carpet,
a reference to his drawing Kabbala symbols on the
floor back in Los Angeles. Always Crashing in
the Same Car was a reference to the time David
crashed his Mercedes in Switzerland; the accident
had additional comedy value because David was
trying to raise some much-needed cash by selling
the mangled vehicle.
As the tape rolled, the musicians relaxed,
gamely replaying and revising, happy to be hanging
out in luxury for two weeks. Drinks and food were
on call twenty-four hours a day, and Roy Young
kept the staff busy replenishing the bucket of ice
which he kept on top of the piano alongside a
bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic. After one take,
Young heard a rat-tat-tat in his headphones and
looked up to see David at the talk-back mic,

holding up a glass. So I sent him one in, mixed

just how I had them, he says. And this happened a
few times.
Some time later, Visconti announced that they
had a possible take, and the band trooped in. As
the tape rolled, David sat in his characteristic lotus
position on a chair by the desk, chin resting on his
hands, apparently deep in thought. The assembled
musicians waited expectantly for several minutes
to hear his verdict until they realised he was fast
asleep. And I will always remember, he scratched
his head exactly like Oliver Hardy when he woke
up, says Young, and then Tony said, David, I
think youd better go for a lie-down.
As David made his way down the steep
stairway that led from the control room, there was
a sudden thud, followed by a series of bumps, as
he bounced down the wooden steps. The musicians
all crowded around to check on their singer,
sprawled in a heap on the floor below all, that is,
except for Roy Young. I hid under my piano, he
says, petrified. The next morning David pulled
up his shirt to reveal dark red weals all the way up

his skinny ribcage; the spectacle was accompanied

by Viscontis warning that if another gin and tonic
made its way into the control room, Young would
be on the next plane home.
The lack of a clear outcome to these experiments
was confusing, but at its heart was a simple,
intuitive, brilliant leap forward. Davids intentions
on the album that would become Low was to
combine the glacial electronic instrumentation that
hed heard on Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream
records, and combine them with a boisterous,
vibrant R&B rhythm section. In sonic terms, the
result was heavily influenced by Neu!, the band
founded by Kraftwerk refugee Klaus Dinger the
harmonised, resonant guitar lines of Neu! songs
like Seeland, from their last great album, Neu 75,
have echoes throughout Low, and Heroes, too.
But where Dingers drumming was static, a
metronomic pulse, Dennis Davis spirit and energy
drives the first half of Low ever onward.
A restless improviser, who worked in parallel
with Roy Ayers throughout much of his time with
Bowie, Davis was as obsessed with the recording

process as Bowie and Visconti who rigged up

the Eventide Harmoniser on Davis snare drum,
then fed the results through the drummers
headphones so he could interact with its
superhuman clunk. The constant counterpoint
between the buoyant optimism of Davis, Alomar
and Murray and the contemplative, intellectual
clarity of Gardiner and Eno gives the album a
delicious tension between optimism and anomie.
The music reflected exactly Davids mental
condition. I was at the end of my tether physically
and emotionally. But overall, I get a sense of real
optimism through the veils of despair from Low.
Throughout the summer of 1976, while the same
old financial and legal crises continually menaced
him, Davids main strategy along with attempts
to seek oblivion through sex or beer was to find
solace in problem-solving, piecing together The
Idiot and Low like giant jigsaw puzzles. Iggy was
his main partner in this occupational therapy; and
Davids
unfailing instinct for
selecting
collaborators had led him to Brian Eno.
David knew Eno vaguely from the very first

Ziggy tour, when Roxy Music had shared the bill at

The Croydon Greyhound, and later at the Rainbow
show. Theyd not kept in touch, but when Eno
turned up at the Station to Station Wembley dates
in May, David had exerted all his charm, telling
him hed been playing Enos Discreet Music
throughout the American leg of the tour: Naturally,
flattery always endears you to someone, says Eno.
I thought, God, he must be smart.
When he turned up, around ten days into the Low
session, Eno effected a quiet revolution. Hired
initially by Bowie because he represented a oneman entre to ambient music, a genre hed created
pretty much single-handedly with Discreet Music
and Another Green World , Eno was an inspired
choice for accomplice, for his musical twists and
turns paralleled Davids own journey. A grammarschool boy and art-school student, he had quit
Roxy Music in July 1973, frustrated by their
abandonment of art-rock experimentation. The
cultural battle that took place within Roxy
Ferrys penchant for cover versions and glossy
artwork, versus Enos love for the random

echoed similar conflicts being played out in

Bowies head. In broad terms, Eno was hired to
play right brain to Bowies left brain; in musical
terms, he was an inspired, punctilious synthesiser
craftsman. In personal terms, he and Bowie were
a s sympatisch as they come, sharing a healthy
sense of humour and a healthy streak of pretension,
a taste for sexual adventure, and a love of reenacting Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore comedy
routines.
In future years, Eno would often be inaccurately
credited as the producer of Low; yet he was coconspirator as well as hired hand. Arriving late in
the sessions, he sat alongside Bowie as they
briefed the musicians on the next stage of the
recording, like a pair of avuncular Squadron
Commanders prepared to wave their jittery
recruits into the azure. They sat us down and
played us these tapes of the [The Man Who Fell to
Earth] soundtrack and told us what they were
planning, says Young. It was out of our
experience and honestly, quite a few of us
didnt really like the idea. Bowie was acutely

conscious that RCA might have a similar reaction.

We dont know if this will ever be released, he
told Young and the others, but I have to do this.
Eno arrived when the rhythm tracks for side one
o f Low were essentially complete; Murray and
Davis flew home, while Carlos, Gardiner and Roy
Young stayed on to work up the instrumental lines.
Although Enos more unsettling managerial
techniques like his Burroughsian use of Oblique
Strategy cards were not extensively deployed on
this record, he was crucial in motivating both the
musicians and Bowie, who was distracted by legal
negotiations to extricate himself from Michael
Lippman. Eno encouraged a bullish attitude in
which, as Visconti puts it, Whether the record
company was behind it or not did not matter at that
point we simply made the most far-out album we
could think of. Yet the musical discussions
werent exclusively high-falutin: the decision to
augment the first batch of recordings with an
instrumental side two followed a debate about
whether Bowie fans would consider the results
decent value for money. We felt that getting six or

seven songs with David Bowie singing, with

choruses and verses, still made for a good album,
says Visconti, then making the second side
instrumental gave a perfect Ying Yang balance.
Indeed, the seven songs that made up the first
side were all intricately worked, with an
impeccable internal logic; Davids singing on the
main vocal lines was his most honest and
unaffected in years, offset by his vibratoed
Brechtian yelps for the choruses. Soon a decades
worth of imitators would copy the impressionistic
lyrics, the low-key narrative vocal and
foregrounded snare drum; yet none of them would
share the sense of discovery of the Chteau
sessions.
More low-key than David, happy to share japes
with Iggy, Brian Eno often took a similar tack to
David, picking peoples brains for ideas, quizzing
the Chteau engineers about techniques other
studio clients had used, patiently working out how
to operate the desk and tape machine before asking
to be left alone to painstakingly overdub
harmonised parts one line at a time using his EMS

AKS suitcase synth a glorious object which

looked like an overgrown Stylophone mated with
the TARDIS control panel. Appropriately, Eno
pieced together his parts to the sombre
Warszawa on the days when David had to drive
in to Paris for soul-sapping meetings with
Lippmans lawyers at the Hotel Raphael. Once the
backing tracks were finished, Viscontis wife,
singer Mary Hopkin, arrived at the Chteau to add
her doo-doo-doos to the introduction of Sound
and Vision, while Tony and Marys son Morgan
played with Zowie and Marion.
One day, Eno heard Morgan picking out three
notes on the reception room piano; he used the
simple sombre A, B, C as the main melody of
Warszawa, later augmented with Davids
devotional, wordless vocals, influenced by one of
Enos favourite recordings of a Balkan boys
choir.
Although Iggy is hardly audible on the Low
recordings his voice appears on What in the
World, a survivor from the Idiot sessions his
laid-back humour was vital. Hed huddle with

David after his gruelling legal meetings, which

went on for days in a row, and use humour to ease
him out of his exhausted, emotionally drained,
state.
Towards the end of the recording, Iggys jokes
developed into full-blown comedy monologues,
based on the endless, hilarious disasters he and his
fellow Stooges had suffered. One night he
described how Stooges drummer Scotty used
MainMans cash to buy a huge drum kit, which got
smaller and smaller at each show. A simple beat
is where its at, Scotty assured the other Stooges,
who soon realised he was selling the kit off, piece
by piece, to support his smack habit. Another night,
Iggy stripped off his shirt to show the scars on his
chest then mimed out how he was forced to roll
in broken glass to end a song, the only foolproof
way of making his fellow Stooges, nodding out on
heroin, recognise the final bars. We would just
fall about, aching with laughter, our sides would
hurt, says Visconti. David would listen to these
picaresque stories for hours, shaking his head,
telling Eno or Visconti, This is unbelievable, I

cant imagine any human being went through this

and lived. The tales of disaster, all true and
rendered without any self-pity, were somehow
soothing.
There were echoes of more ancient tragedies,
too, according to Tony Visconti, who claims the
spirits of the previous residents of the Chteau,
star-crossed lovers Frdric Chopin and George
Sand, haunted the building. Bowie, too, considered
it a spooky place I did refuse one bedroom, as it
felt impossibly cold in certain areas, he says
today. Interrogated about the spectral presence, the
Chteaus staff dismiss the stories. The ghosts
were in the echo chambers, says Laurent Thibault,
thats where the odd noises came from. Yet,
delving deeper, it turns out that Visconti and
Bowie were not the only ones to sense the pianist
and his muse: Deep Purples Ritchie Blackmore
had similar experiences; while at one Ouiji-board
session, ghostly messages turned out to be
rendered in perfect Polish Chopins native
tongue. In later years, the Chteau staff attempted
to damp down widespread gossip about spectral

presences, which persisted until the studio closed

in the wake of owner Michel Magnes suicide.
David loved the Chteau It was a joy,
ramshackle and comfy but as his slot came to an
end, his last days at the studio were marked by
bickering. Visconti cordially detested rival bassist
and producer Laurent Thibault, who was blamed
for the presence of a reporter posing as a
receptionist (she spent hours in Davids room,
engaged in research). He also disliked the food
and the alignment of the tape machines, and
preferred the Germanic efficiency of Hansa
Studios. Visconti remembers he and David
suffered food poisoning from warm cheese; so
David, Tony, Brian and Iggy decamped to Berlin in
mid-October, shortly before the news of Davids
exile in Europe broke in the German press, and
then worldwide.
There were more overdubs to come at Hansa;
first David, Eno and Visconti reviewed the tapes at
Studio 1 on the KuDamm, before completing
Weeping Wall and Subterraneans at the newly
opened studio by the Wall. Their assistant and

translator was Eduard Meyer, a qualified Tonmeister sound-master whom the trio would
soon corrupt, subverting his formal training. They
went easy on him first: when David discovered he
was a skilled cellist, he asked him to add a cello
line to Art Decade. I am sorry, Mr Bowie,
Meyer replied, I am a score-reading musician, not
an improvising one. Remembering the skills
picked up from Frida Dinns Observers Book of
Music, David wrote out a part in manuscript. It
was among the last instrumental additions to an
album that David knew represented the biggest risk
of his career.
According to Visconti, when RCA heard the
album, one executive told David, If you make
Young Americans Two instead, well buy you a
mansion in Philadelphia! David had been prone to
occasional doubts when hed completed albums in
the past, but not this time. RCAs confusion simply
hardened his resolve. If that were not enough,
when Tony Defries heard an acetate of Low, he
dismissed it as a piece of crap that even Nic Roeg
turned down and refused to allow it to count to

Davids contractual obligation towards him. What

could be more perfect? Low would be a new
beginning, and David Bowies estranged father
figure wouldnt even have a slice of it.

16
Helden
This was clearly an ex-war zone and
now it was an international boundary,
which was really scary. We recorded
500 feet from barbed wire, and a tall
tower where you could see gun turrets,
with foreign soldiers looking at us with
binoculars. Everything said, We
shouldnt be making a record here.
Tony Visconti

Checkpoint Charlie, the fabled gateway between

West and East Berlin. Tony Visconti, sitting
alongside David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Coco
Schwab, watches nervously as the guard
scrutinises their passports, while his colleagues

cradle their machine pistols ominously, all of them

overseen by a low, glass-fronted watchtower.
Suddenly, the guard calls for assistance:
Friedrich, kommen sie hier! The party freezes,
looking on as the second guard flips through the
passports suddenly both of the Prussian-Greyuniformed figures, sidearms at their hips, break
into laughter.
Visconti steps out of the Mercedes, and the
guards point out the passport photos. Iggy had this
platinum hair, and Bambi eyes, says the producer.
Bowie had that dreadful curly perm from around
Space Oddity. The two remade, remodelled,
crop-haired stars, far from home, are forced to
silently endure the ridicule, before finally driving
out to the East, with its ruined buildings, derelict
train tracks, women sporting fifties-style beehives,
and the countryside beyond.
What might have surprised the guards even
more, had they known it, was that for both rock
stars, abandoning the hedonism, excess and silly
haircuts of the West i.e., exactly those values
being kept out at gunpoint at Checkpoint Charlie

had brought David Bowie and Iggy Pop to a new

joy of life, as David put it. It was an education,
says Iggy Pop, always there was the idea, were
trying to learn something here. And to be pretty
disciplined about it.
In Berlin, play and so-called work were
intertwined. It was a rare week that involved no
recording, or administration, but there were plenty
of days when they could ramble however they
chose. David and Iggy might spend such a day
wandering around the antique markets on
Winterfeldplatz, or book shops and cafs down by
St Matthias Kirche. Iggy would often rise early and
walk for five or eight miles; eventually he claimed
to have explored every nook and cranny of the city.
In winter, theyd sometimes take the S-Bahn train
to the Wannsee, a lake resort on the Havel River,
for long lunches under the glass roof, not far from
the villa where senior Nazis mapped out the Final
Solution. David showed Iggy how to prep a
canvas, or apply acrylic paint; both of them spent
time on artwork. David completed a portrait of
Iggy rendered in a convincing expressionist style

reminiscent of the works theyd seen at Die

Brcke, a tiny, modern museum shaded by the pine
trees of the Grnewald Forest. Most of all, theyd
simply walk, often dropping in on friends without
warning just to say hello, like they used to back in
the sixties, before most people owned a phone.
Compared to their previous existence, this was a
life of monk-like restraint. But both men were
realistic about their regime. Occasional excess
was acceptable, but heroin, Iggys old bte noir,
was out of bounds. One evening, David took a cab
back home to the Hauptstrasse when the taxi driver
mentioned he had the dooj ready for his friend.
David warned the cabbie, coldly, there would be
dire consequences if any of the dooj heroin
should reach his friend, but didnt mention the
incident to Iggy, careful not to appear too
controlling. Both men tried every brand of German
beer on offer, but in the city, rather than the
omnipresent American drug scene, There was an
artsy-crafty weekend drug culture, says Iggy. So
on the weekends wed go meet an eccentric
character who was interested in the arts, and knew

other people, and maybe youd have a little coke

and get drunk and go till four in the morning to
three or four clubs.
Many locals knew who Bowie and Iggy were;
but, naturally polite, theyd pretend not to
recognise Bowie when they saw him in regular
haunts, like the citys two Zip record stores.
Instead, fans would sneak up to the cashier once
David had departed with a carrier-bag full of
records, and ask, Was hat Bowie gekauft?
Visitors came and went regularly over this
period, most of them staying at the Schlosshotel
Gerhus. Angie was among the first, arriving soon
after the completion of Low, in November 1976.
Its difficult to pinpoint, from her point of view,
that point at which she realised her marriage was
irrevocably doomed, but her disdain for her
husbands and his friends attempt to sort
themselves out indicates their relationship was
now poisoned by indifference and contempt. A lot
of people love the idea of going and making nice to
the people youve defeated so you can treat them
like slaves. That was Davids going to Berlin

story: Let me lie with you in case theres

something we didnt take from you that I havent
learned yet its pathetic. Angies distaste
extended to Low, and The Idiot, too, her opinions
echoing those of her old patron and nemesis, Tony
Defries. Unsurprisingly, the Bowie family
Christmas, spent in Switzerland, would be their
last together. Bowie was back in Berlin by 8
January, 1977, for his thirtieth birthday, celebrated
with Iggy and Romy Haag. Low was released the
next week, on 14 January.
Lows reception by both the press and Bowies
record company was oddly in context with the
records sleeve the title and photo, of David in
profile, made up a visual pun: Low profile. RCAs
reaction to the album was simple incomprehension.
As Robin Eggar, RCAs press officer at the time,
remembers, the company didnt really know what
to do with Low or Heroes. They only put them
out because they were Bowie albums and the
attitude totally was, What are we going to do with
this? Equally, Davids failure to promote the
album meant press coverage was modest. Yet the

myth that Low was greeted with widespread

disdain is just that, for most reviewers realised
this was a major event in Bowies career. Tim
Lott, future Whitbread-prize winning novelist,
spoke for many in declaring Low, the most
difficult piece of music Bowie has ever put his
name to. The writer ended his preview for Sounds
with an appropriately fractured procession of
adjectives, which ended:
So. This album might be
Bowies best ever.
Enos best ever.
A mechanical classic.
Lott cited Sound and Vision as the pinnacle of
the album; his verdict anticipated its success as a
single, reaching number three in the UK (but
stalling at sixty-nine in the US). Its success further
confused RCA, who were also, Eggar points out,
intimidated by Bowie, accepting his refusal to tour

the album without argument, and likewise caving in

to his persuasion that the company should release
Iggys The Idiot, which came out on 21 March,
1977. From RCAs point of view, Davids
announcement that he would tour to promote Iggys
album, rather than his own, was perfectly
consistent in its complete flouting of commercial
logic. David took over all the arrangements for the
tour, calling in Low guitarist Ricky Gardiner, as
well as two brothers who had passed him a demo
cassette during Davids first US tour, back in
October 1972.
Hunt and Tony Sales were the sons of comic
Soupy Sales; theyd earned their Musicians Union
cards when drummer Hunt was twelve and bassist
Tony was thirteen, hung out with Frank Sinatra, sax
legend King Curtis and other hep-cats, and
recorded their first album with Todd Rundgren
when Hunt was just sixteen. Loud, hell-raising and
formidably talented, from the moment they arrived
in Berlin in February, they ensured that David and
Iggys weekend debaucheries became seven-day
affairs. Their routine normally involved a late

breakfast at the Schlosshotel, rehearsals from 11

until 5, goulash for dinner, a quick sleep, then trips
to Romy Haags, or an old bar frequented by the
SS where patrons could use the phones on the table
to find conversational or sexual partners, or clubs
in Kreuzberg where, says Tony Sales, I saw a
real-life re-enactment of that Doors LP cover, with
a midget with an umbrella, standing on the bar.
In the brief, intense rehearsals at the old UFA
film studios, filled with old filing cabinets
crammed with film canisters and ancient Weimar
and Nazi-era paperwork, through which all the
band members rifled, the brothers watched the two
oddly complementary singers chat, work and relax.
It was two schoolboys hanging out, chums, says
Sales. It was a very loving relationship in a sense.
David was at a place where he needed to recharge
and got behind Iggy and in return that helped him,
taking the pressure off being David Bowie.
The brothers were among the first outsiders to
see the two singers in their new hide-out. As word
had leaked out in the autumn that David had holed
up with the ex-leader of The Stooges, rumours had

started to spread. Back in 1976, supporters like

Iggy fanzine editor Harald Inhlsen were writing
letters to fellow fans, speculating that David had
kidnapped Iggy and was keeping him under his
thumb. The implication that Iggy was being
exploited as Davids sex slave was widespread,
entertaining, and has made its way into print. Iggy
himself laughs, and denies such hanky-panky; even
Angie Bowie, always prone to seeing her husband
in the role of exploiter, believes otherwise, asking,
with her unerring eye for practical detail, Who
would be on the bottom?
A more plausible interpretation for cynics was
that Iggys main purpose was to give David
credibility: this was probably the case with Iggys
role at MainMan, but by the time of The Idiot,
there was a selflessness to Davids behaviour that,
says Hunt Sales, is rare in the jaded world of rock
music. David really loved him as a friend. Giving
something to someone is not giving something and
expecting something in return. You just give it.
It says much for the zeal with which fans
followed Bowies career that by the time the Iggy

tour started, on 1 March, 1977, Davids absence

from the public eye had become a widespread
obsession. For the opening date of Iggys first ever
solo tour, David chose the town that had hosted
Ziggys debut performance over four years before,
Aylesbury.
He
cheerfully
greeted
old
acquaintances, like promoter David Stopps, jokily
enquiring, Whats a clean-cut kid like you still
doing in a town like this? and insisting the crowd
not be kept outside waiting when the backline
amplifiers were delayed in customs.
Kris Needs, whod designed the flyer for the
Friars show back in 1971, had seen Bowie in
nearly all of his guises. This one was the biggest
shock of them all. This is a guy who roughly a
year before was supposed to be out of his mind on
cocaine. And here he was in sensible shoes and a
jacket, maybe a flat cap like Iggys, just open and
chatting to everyone.
When the doors opened, it took a couple of
songs before the audience noticed David Bowie,
sitting at the side of the stage, playing a Baldwin
electric piano. Soon, like the parting of the Red

Sea, the audience split in two, as fans in the Civic

Hall craned their necks to look at the keyboard
player, who was studiously avoiding their gaze.
Hard-core Iggy fans like Johnny Thunders, Sex
Pistols bassist Glen Matlock and Damned guitarist
Brian James, all part of a London punk posse
whod travelled up for Iggys comeback
remained at stage centre. The reactions to Iggys
new guise were mixed. Johnny Thunders was
dismissive: Iggys gone cabaret, he whined.
The punk movement had finally exploded into
mainstream consciousness with the Sex Pistols
appearance on Bill Grundys Today show the
previous December. Bowies Station to Station
shows at Wembley the previous May typified the
stadium rock that many punks affected to despise;
even his patronage of Iggy and Lou, the twin punk
figureheads, was regarded as self-serving. But few
of the British punks bothered to hide the fact that
theyd cut their teeth on Ziggy-era Bowie. Even if
the Sex Pistols had stolen Bowies microphones
from the Hammersmith Ziggy farewell, as claimed
by guitarist Steve Jones, the theft was partly an act

of affection. For those attempting to break out of

punk convention, especially out of London, Bowie
would be a guiding light; Manchesters Joy
Division would take The Idiot as a sonic and
lyrical template, and Bowie was soon being namechecked by Echo and the Bunnymen, Cabaret
Voltaire, Talking Heads and more.
In the meantime, Bowies low-key, stage-right
role alongside Iggy was another object lesson in
positioning. Soon, peers like Ray Davies and
Pete Townshend would embrace the punk
movement, donning skinny ties and losing a little
bit of dignity. Davids slightly aloof position
located him as an insider, not a follower; he was a
decent keyboard player, too. But the Iggy tour was
harder work than David had anticipated, keeping
up with Iggy and the unstoppable Sales brothers.
The latter two were phenomenal musicians they
had an almost telepathic musical bond which meant
they didnt even need to hear each other in the
monitors to stay in sync but they existed in a
blaze of drink, native energy and cocaine. Bassist
Tony remembers walking through the hallways of

hotels naked and stoned it was over-the-top

exhaustion and then youd do more cocaine to
cover the exhaustion.
It was a mark of the new, relaxed David that his
fear of flying evaporated over this tour; David
boarded a 747 to New York with Andy Kent and
was perfectly fine, says the photographer. But
from the moment the band hit the States, the drug
use and manic behaviour intensified. A
wonderfully strait-laced joint appearance on The
Dinah Shore Show, with David letting Iggy occupy
the limelight, seemed calm, as if the pair had
attained a new maturity, but backstage it was
another story. Tour members remember full vodka
bottles hitting the rafters in Detroit; a gun pointed
at the stage in California; and a walking-talking
doll with a Nazi flag marching across the Sales
brothers dressing room. Soon Iggy was overcome
by a new megalomania, and things became very
dark, says bassist Tony Sales. I was in real bad
shape but I could always stand up.
David begged off from a subsequent Iggy tour,
explaining, quite reasonably, The drug use was

unbelievable, and I knew it was killing me, but a

few weeks after the first tour concluded in San
Diego on 16 April, he threw himself into the fray
again, to produce a second Iggy album. These
sessions would take place at Hansa in its
Kthenerstrasse
location,
just
by
the
Potsdamerplatz and the Wall. By the time the
recording started, says Iggy, I think David was
pretty sick of my rock histrionics, and I was
probably pretty sick of where he was coming from,
so there was a lot of friction but on the other
hand we were both really into it.
Bowies production on what would become Lust
for Life was, quite simply, masterful. When he
heard guitarist Ricky Gardiner strumming a catchy
guitar riff, he suggested Iggy use it as the basis of
what became The Passenger. His own melodies,
on Lust for Life and Some Weird Sin, were
powerful and muscular. During these sessions
Bowie showed a rare flexibility, ready to change
the schedule at any moment if Iggy, for instance,
had a vocal idea he wanted to nail. Iggy describes

himself as the happiest person in the world

during this period. I was living on red wine,
cocaine and German sausage, slept in a cot and
only had a cold shower. (He adds that other
musicians avoided him as, having only a cold
shower, he never used it.)
By now, Iggy had moved into his own flat in the
Hinterhof servants quarters at the back of 155,
Hauptstrasse with girlfriend Esther Friedmann,
and was asserting his independence. One perfect
example was the song Success: dissatisfied with
Davids original melody a damn crooning
thing, he called it Iggy arrived at the studio early
to record the song with a simpler, stripped-down
tune, over the Sales brothers swinging, mid-tempo
groove a controlled gallop, says Carlos
Alomar. The song, as the title suggests, proclaims
that success is finally on its way; Iggys stream-ofconsciousness lyrics a car, a Chinese rug were
all the more poignant, as events would soon
conspire to deny him the very luxuries he
described in song.
Just as with The Idiot, Davids work on Lust for

Life served as a dry-run for his own project, which

he started almost immediately after wrapping up
Iggys album. The centrepiece of his so-called
Berlin trilogy, Heroes was the only album of the
three entirely recorded in Berlin. The city
permeated both the sound and the ambience of the
album, in a location which, according to Tony
Visconti, was both a dream and [a place]
where everything said, We shouldnt be making a
record here.
It was Hansa Studios that best embodied
Berlins grandeur and menace. The main building,
on the Kthenerstrasse, was built as the
Meistersaal in 1910, a beautiful, stern clubhouse to
showcase the skills of Berlins master masons. But
in 1976, it looked like a forlorn wreck, in a
forgotten sector of the city. Left derelict throughout
most of the Second World War, its elegant Ionic
pillars were bullet-scarred, the lofty pediment
blown off, the upper windows bricked up, with
pigeons roosting within; a quarter of its
courtyarded block had simply collapsed. All
around, streets retained their gap-toothed look, like

Brixton in 1947, and from the second storey the

section of the Wall leading up to Potsdamerplatz
was clearly visible: this was clearly an ex-war
zone, says Visconti, and now it was an
international boundary, which was really scary.
We recorded 500 feet from barbed wire, and a tall
tower where you could see gun turrets, with
foreign soldiers looking at us with binoculars.
The tiny crew included Alomar, Dennis Davis,
George Murray and Visconti, all of whom would
get a taxi in from the Schlosshotel Gerhus every
lunchtime. According to the producer, one factor in
getting the album done quickly was that David
was paying my hotel bills so he didnt want to
waste time. The musicians would therefore work
an intense eight-hour day, from 12 till 8, and then
hit the Berlin clubs, says Visconti. Brian Eno
stayed at Hauptstrasse, at least some of the time.
Iggy often entertained listeners with a hilarious
description of Enos girlfriend handcuffed to a
radiator, a superlative example of art-school
sophistication which impressed the posterboy of
rock n roll excess, although sadly its doubtful

Eno had the leisure time for such pursuits. Eno

loved the ambience; Carlos Alomar was less
impressed: The hotels were, for an American,
very old European, too many back staircases. My
first impression of German men was that they were
pigs. They ate a lot of pork, they looked a certain
way and when it came to treating their women I
was appalled maybe it was an age thing, but the
overall German experience for me was very this
sucks.
The difference in atmosphere between the
Chteau and Hansa, sensed by Alomar and the
rhythm section, had its effect from the moment the
backing tracks went down. Last time around, the
beats were funky, spritely; here, four-square
rhythms give a solid, dogmatic rock feel, more
evocative of Krautrock bands like Neu!. The sound
was bigger, literally, for the musicians set up in the
wood-floored main hall Studio 2 which
Visconti miked up to capture an ambient zing and
excitement. Working out the songs was an edgier
process; the chord changes would be mapped out
and endlessly altered, sometimes at random.

In those first few days, Alomars contribution

was vital; mild, almost stately, he was supremely
competitive but always remained calm when
challenged to deliver. The mentality that I had
with David was always the same; you ask me for
one thing, I will supply you with a million options
until you tell me to stop. And thats my claim to
fame. Visconti, too, remembers Alomars
inventiveness at crafting subtle melodies, one
after another the ones people dont notice straight
away, but they make the song come together.
Hes quite remarkable, Eno told writer Ian
MacDonald later that year.
And he had to be. As early as 1967, David
Bowie would arrive in the studio with a complete
set of songs, all of them painstakingly mapped out
on manuscript paper. A few years later, by the time
o f Hunky Dory, songs had arrived seemingly by
magic, in a dream or on a bus ride. Now, in the
culmination of a process that had begun just two
years before with Station to Station, David
walked into the studio without one complete song.
He had completely changed the process at the heart

of his music, as if hed abandoned a conventional

representational technique for a new kind of aural
expressionism.
Yet buried within the abstract shards of the
songs that were slowly pieced together making
sense of the random there were plenty of traces
of Bowies hard-learned traditional skills. Sons
of the Silent Age, the only song sketched out
before the sessions, showed many glimpses of
earlier Bowie personae: its opening is delivered in
a nasal Tony Newley croon and the agonised
swooping melody of its middle section baby Ill
never let you go is an almost literal restatement
of the middle-section theme from 1971s Width of
a Circle. Then, suddenly, the melody morphs into
multitracked, Lennon-esque vocals; the gloriously
naive saxophone evokes a barren future world and
the fifties kitsch of the Kon-Rads or Joe Meek.
Similarly, the futuristic gleam of V-2
Schneider a tribute both to the terror weapons
that had landscaped south London and Florian
Schneider, the founder of Kraftwerk was also
humanised by the glorious teenage honk of

Bowies sax, while Blackout briefly quotes

Boney Maroney by Little Richard acolyte Larry
Williams. Like the 1930s futurism that inspired
him, the music of Heroes evokes both past and
future. For perhaps the first time, Bowies long,
circuitous route to his present state seemed to make
sense.
For Bowie and Eno in particular, the sessions
pushed them to a new level of intensity; both had
hardly any time to eat, with Bowie subsisting
mainly on a rushed raw egg, Eno on cereal. (Brian
would start his day with a cup full of boiling water
into which he would cut huge lumps of garlic,
adds Bowie. He was no fun to do backing vocals
with on the same mike.) Guitarist Robert Fripp,
with whom Eno had worked closely since July
1972, would be thrown into the mix for just two
days; forty-eight hours in which he would fantasise
fondly, in a Somerset accent, of unleashing his
sword of union on the locals but he would
never get the chance.
For all of the tiny crew, their time in Berlin
duri ng Heroes would result in a series of

unforgettable images: the day that Visconti cropped

Iggy and Davids hair and they wandered around
looking like old men; visits to an antique shop
whose proprietor had known Marlene Dietrich; the
frenzied warehouse parties with local tearaways
like artist Martin Kippenberger; the day Tony
Visconti saw a huge black tank rumbling down the
Kurfrstendamm; or the time Edu Meyer saw a
guard on a DDR machine-gun post surveying them
though his binoculars and attempted to dazzle him
with an Anglepoise lamp, causing Bowie and
Visconti to duck under the control desk, terrified.
For David, these Berlin experiences had a
calming effect, says Alomar. But even in the act of
creation, his joy was always controlled. In this, he
was a complete contrast to Iggy, who would swing
from euphoria to depression indeed, just when
Heroes was being completed, Iggy succumbed
to a manic-depressive cocaine jag, for which
David and Coco arranged an intervention, asking
Barbara and Tim Dewitt to whisk him away to
Capri. David was an educated thinker so that
would rescue him from the depressions, says

Carlos. But David also thought way too much.

His enjoyment of the now was always
overshadowed by the thought it wouldnt last.
Likewise, Davids trademark futurism was
omnipresent in Heroes, but gained a new
poignancy in their Potsdamerplatz outpost. Later,
describing this time in Berlin as one of the
happiest periods in his life, David would pick up
this poignant note. In some ways, sadly, [the three
albums] really captured, unlike anything else in
that time, a sense of yearning for a future that we
all knew would never come to pass.
Neukln, the most desolate song of the set,
epitomised the bleakness at the centre of this
futuristic optimism. Haunting and stately, it played
the same role as Lows Warszawa, and was
inspired by the once-grand, now grim multioccupation buildings of the Berlin sector actually
called Neuklln that housed the citys Turkish
gastarbeiters (guest workers). Workers brought in
to supply Berlins insatiable demand for labour,
they were denied citizenship: stateless, temporary
residents, like David.

One song was notably simpler than the rest;

based on the same, basic G-to-C chord change that
David had used for Iggys song Success just a
few weeks before, and taken at a similar stately
pace: Alomars controlled gallop. The songs
melody, when it arrived, was based around the
same three notes that David had sung on the Iggy
song; and as the musicians worked on the backing
track, Alomar once again added an insistent,
unforgettable guitar line that emphasised the purity
of its two-chord sequence; yet it would be Robert
Fripps majestic, yearning guitar that would
emphasise the songs monumental quality.
In future years, rumours would persist that
David had told Fripp the track was an
instrumental, to encourage him to play all the way
through; Visconti remembers otherwise, although
Eno, who left before it was complete, assumed the
track would be an instrumental. He thought it
sounded heroic. Fripp recorded his guitar in the
huge ballroom, stepping between two taped marks
on the floor, which marked the location at which
each note would build into a feedback loop. Fripp

made three passes at the song; Visconti blended all

three, to ensure the guitar line floats serenely
overhead, without falling to earth.
When David came to add the vocals after Eno
had left, he used the technique hed seen Iggy
harness on Lust for Life, improvising words, or
finalising them at the last moment. The improvised
lyrics, simple and deep, were the making of the
albums most famous song. Visconti: He would
scribble down a few notes on the top of the piano,
then say, OK, drop me in after dolphins can
swim. And that way he wrote and sang Heroes
simultaneously. At the end of an hour and half we
had a complete vocal.
The unique ambience of Hansa, with its view of
the Wall, imprinted itself on the sound as well as
the imagery of Heroes. The moment hed walked
onto the studio floor, Visconti realised the room
itself had a unique sound; when it came time to add
the vocals to Heroes, Visconti placed one
Neumann mike in the normal position, close up,
then one fifteen feet away, and one on the back
wall. The two distant mikes were routed through a

noise gate, a device to switch them on as Davids

voice filled the space. The effect was magnificent;
Bowies singing was the best hed committed to
tape, fresh and without artifice.
Few lyrics have been created and captured in
such quick succession; and this is what gives
Heroes much of its immediacy. The lyrics are
simple, but shot through with caveats. The songs
lovers yearn for transcendence, but will only reach
it briefly. Even the brief state of lovers bliss, as
they kiss by the Wall, is an act of the imagination.
David claimed he had indeed seen two lovers
underneath the Wall; later, once Tony Visconti had
divorced his wife, Mary Hopkin, it turned out the
lovers in question were Visconti and Antonia
Maas, a nightclub singer whom hed met and asked
to sing on the album just a few days before. Yet in
2008, Maas stated that the song had been
completed before their tryst and that Bowie
could not have seen them.
The six or so minutes that Bowie, Visconti and
Eno carved out were all the more precious because
they were irreplaceable. To shape the song,

Visconti had cut apart the master tape to edit it; to

record the vocal, Visconti had mixed the three
microphones onto one track on the master all he
had space for. They couldnt revise the effect, or
re-arrange the song. This was Bowies doing. He
quoted this Buddhist philosophy, how we live in a
mire of options, says Visconti. If you commit
yourself, youre free.
Bizarrely, Heroes, the song that would become
arguably the best-known of David Bowies career,
would hardly set the charts alight. In the UK, it
entered the charts in October, peaking at number
twenty-four in an eight-week run. David himself
would come to treasure the song for the effect on
his live audience. In Europe, it is one of the ones
that seemed to have special resonance. The song
failed as a single in America, but according to
Bowie, it would become pivotal in live shows:
Its a strange phenomenon Many of the crowd
favourites were never radio or chart hits; Heroes
tops them all.
Resistant as they were to Low, RCA summoned up

more enthusiasm for its successor, unleashing a

memorable print campaign for its release on 14
October, 1977; the press ads featured the
Heroes sleeve photo the pose based on
Roquairol, Erich Heckels portrait of his friend
Ernst Kirchner accompanied by the slogan,
Theres New Wave, theres Old Wave, and
theres David Bowie. It was a masterful piece of
positioning which allowed him to remain aloof
from a punk movement which, like glam before it,
soon turned into a parody of itself.
The new, dressed-down David would do his
own share of promotion, spending most of the
autumn engaged in press and TV interviews. His
first appearance, on 9 September, was his most
memorable; like his appearance on Lift Off with
Ayshea, five years before, this would be in
Granada Televisions childrens slot, designed to
catch kids just back from school. From late August,
this half-hour slot had also become the venue for
the comeback campaign of Davids earliest
musical friend and rival, Marc Bolan, in his new
TV series, simply titled Marc.

The reunion with Marc was warm, chatty

relaxed at first, for what was their second meeting
that year. In the spring, Marc had been chubby and
pasty, thanks to his brandy and cocaine diet
people used to call him the glam chipolata, says
Marcs PR and confidant, Keith Altham but a
brief reunion with David back in March had
helped rebuild his confidence. Marc had played
Altham an acetate of Madman, a song the pair
had recorded together: It was avant-garde, quite
Eno-ish, says Altham, and Marc said they were
going to work on it together as a single. Though
you never knew if there was any foundation to
some of Marcs stories.
Since that meeting, though, Marc had been
through a wonderful, hard-working summer, says
his friend Jeff Dexter, who was business partners
with Bolans manager, Tony Howard. Marc cut out
the cocaine and booze, instead staying in his room
writing, going out in the evening to tap into the
vibe of Londons punk scene, many of whose
leading lights were featured on his show, which
was filmed at Granadas Manchester studios and

launched on 24 August, 1977. Marc oversaw every

aspect of each programme, choosing guests
including Generation X, The Boomtown Rats and
The Jam, introducing each of them, and playing
three or four songs of his own with the latest lineup of T. Rex. Throughout the series everything
was on a high, according to Dexter. And then we
came to the last one in the series. The one with
David.
The two mens conversation was affectionate;
the only awkward moment was when it turned out
David hadnt brought a guitar. Marc handed him a
vintage Fender Stratocaster, insisting a little too
anxiously that David keep the valuable instrument,
still intent on playing the role of wealthy, gracious
superstar. Marcs new band was essentially
Davids old band Tony Newman and Herbie
Flowers and were greeted like long-lost friends;
Jeff Dexter, too, was happy to see his fellow
Buddhist and UFO-spotter from the Redington
Road days.
Jeff left the studio to pick up Tony Howard,
confident the afternoons show would be a fitting

finale to Marcs series. Things began to fall apart

soon after Jeffs exit. Anxious to put Bowie at
ease, Bolan had asked his own guitar roadie, Cliff
Wright, to attend to his guest. They all got on OK,
absolutely, it was old buddies, says Wright.
David was chatting with Herbie and Tony, theyd
discussed the new song. And then it became
apparent that Marc wasnt going to play on
Heroes.
This would be the songs TV debut and David,
reasonably enough, insisted on overseeing the
backing track, sitting down and playing the guitar
part himself, as Flowers and Newman picked up
the song straight away, playing in a folky, almost
Velvets style. David just sat on a chair, and
somehow got that feedback, it was really cool,
says Wright. Herbie and Tony were the kind of
players who could pick up the song straight away,
Marcs guitar wouldnt have suited [but] I
suppose he wanted to be on TV playing it.
As the musicians swiftly assembled the backing
track, Marc mulled over what he considered a
snub; looking miffed, he asked Wright to fetch

four bottles of wine for David, then retired to his

own dressing room with some of the bottles.
And he stayed in there, says Wright. He felt hed
been blanked.
Sitting in his dressing room, Marc got a little
bit worse for wear, says a staff member. There
was worse in store for his fragile ego, as Jeff
Dexter discovered. On his return to the studio,
accompanied by Tony Howard, Dexter found his
way blocked by a burly figure, who informed him,
You cant come in. This is a closed set.
After insisting, This is our session, and no
ones closed it, Dexter managed to gain entrance,
only to find the union floor manager complaining
hed been banned from his own set the entire
studio had been over-run by Davids security.
Keith Altham, whod brought journalist Chris
Welch down to cover the show, managed to get in,
only to find there was some daft woman throwing
her weight around, upsetting people, being really
obnoxious, and this heavy-handed bunch trying to
get everyone out. And it was Marcs show!
Welch hid behind a pillar and watched as Coco

Schwab, an RCA executive and other members of

Bowies entourage argued with the crew, Tony
Howard, Altham and others. David, occupied with
the music, hadnt noticed what was going on. But
as the time for the pair came to record their own
appearances over the backing tracks, the scene was
ugly, says Dexter: Right before they went on, both
of them were upset, Marc particularly, he was in
tears.
With the programme now running late, David
and Marc each taped their own vocal overdub
before they tackled a jam theyd worked on earlier.
Marc looked slightly forlorn as he introduced a
new song in his familiar camp murmur, before the
band launched into a chunky riff copped from Bo
Diddleys Road Runner, with David on Strat and
Elvis shades. As Bowie slinks up to the mic and
sings what can I do theres a sudden flurry in the
corner of the screen, a hand grasping a
microphone, a confused smile and a streak of curly
hair as Marc Bolan attempts to stand on a monitor
wedge, misses, falls off the stage and out of the
picture. As the band shudders to a halt, the camera

zooms to Bowies grin, and the credits roll.

Some of the cast members of Coronation Street ,
whod arrived to record their own show, looked
on at Marc as he laughed and picked himself up.
Then the union crew, riled by the confrontation
with Bowies minders, refused to go into overtime
and reshoot. This would be the last public
appearance that Marc Bolan would ever make. It
was a really shameful end, says Dexter. The
whole of that summer wed been working on the
show, making sure they were as good as they could
be. It was very sad. I was very affected by it.
On the train back to London, Bowie was lowkey and cheery, chatting happily to the very people,
like Keith Altham, that his own security had tried
to eject from the studio. You must read this book
by Kurt Vonnegut, you wont regret it, he told him,
showing him his copy of Cats Cradle. He wasnt
heavy at all, once you took him away from this
suffocating protection, says Altham. Back in
Manchester, there was a hurried, miserable debrief
with producer Muriel Young about the fate of the
programme, before Bolan, Howard and Dexter

returned to London. Later that night, says Tony

Visconti, Marc and David went out to dinner and
made up their quarrel.
The heavy-handedness that had overshadowed
Bolans show was an example of behaviour that
would soon become commonplace in the music
industry. For writers like Chris Welch, whod
championed Bowie a decade before, It was new
in pop terms that distancing. Mick Jagger would
have still been going around on the subway back
then; David set this entourage to create a vibe.
Really its just a way to draw attention to
yourself. It was ironic that, having decried the
hype of the MainMan years, David would
unwittingly replicate the same heavy behaviour.
In this respect, as in so many others, David
would establish a new convention. Those who
followed in his wake Madonna, Prince also
employed a protective screen of minders to shield
both their person and their image. To this day,
friends who send David Bowie packages of photos
or records might find theyd been edited or
censored, with seemingly random items removed

before they reach him. Such behaviour saves time

for a busy man, and there were many occasions in
the future where David would venture out without
minders. But from this period onwards, much of
Davids reality the sensory input of people,
communications, ideas would be filtered by
other people. His life had changed, irrevocably. At
thirty, hed grown up; that earnest, child-like
quality had dissipated, for he was too savvy to
attempt to prolong it. And there was a powerful
reminder of his mortality to come.
The kerfuffle around the Marc show would have
been a passing concern, but for the fact that by the
time it was broadcast, Davids friend and rival
was dead. Marc enjoyed a happy, quiet week after
the taping of his show, but when girlfriend Gloria
Jones returned from America, he stayed up
drinking into the small hours at the Speakeasy and
then Mortons restaurant on 15 September. Marc
had never learned to drive; it was Gloria who took
the wheel of the purple Mini GT, which crashed
into a tree on the south side of Barnes Common,

around 5 a.m. Gloria was badly injured, her jaw

broken and foot trapped beneath the Minis engine,
but it was the left side that took the full force of the
collision, with Marcs seat crushed into the back
of the vehicle. He was killed instantly.
David was devastated by Marcs death. He
would be one of the highest-profile stars at Marcs
funeral in Golders Green, joined by Tony Visconti
and wife Mary Hopkin, Rod Stewart and The
Damned. David would pay endless tributes to his
friend and there would never be any doubt of his
affection for the teenager with whom hed fished
for clothes in Carnaby Street, twelve years before.
Their final appearance together had typified
their relationship of interlaced respect and rivalry.
It was also a stark illustration of how, where
Bolan had rested on his laurels or simply repeated
himself, David had now spent a dozen years
relentlessly pushing himself forward. With Bolans
life over, it was more obvious than ever that David
had won the race for fame theyd both embarked
on. It was also more obvious than ever that,
despite the companions hed acquired in Berlin,

David was now quite alone.

Les Lambert/Rex Features

The Thin White Duke: February, 1976,
David commences his biggest tour to
date, quoting Aleister Crowley and
flirting with fascist chic. Yet despite
appearances, says new friend Iggy Pop,
behind the scenes he would never show
bad form. Not even once.

Duffy/Getty Images
The beautiful but heavy alien: filming
The Man Who Fell to Earth, summer
1975, with Nic Roeg. The movie shoot
was a brief respite from Davids
consumption of Merck, potent medicinal
cocaine supplied by legendary hanger-on
Freddie Sessler.

Richard Creamer
Everybody was in trouble in LA then.
Iggy Pop stabbed and humiliated onstage in Los Angeles, 11 August, 1974,
and soon to be resident in UCLAs
psychiatric ward. David Bowie was one
of his few visitors. Incredibly, the two
casualties would help cure each other

encouraged by Davids cocaine supplier.

Press Association
Der Fuhrerling : the accusation that
Bowie had been snapped making a Nazi
salute at Londons Victoria Station, 2
May, 1976, was unfair but although
hed conquered cocaine by this time, his

obsession with fascist imagery took

longer to vanquish.

Andrew Kent
The Thin White Duke on furlough in
Moscow: dinner at the Metropol with
Iggy Pop and Corinne Coco Schwab,
circa 23 April, 1976. The three set up
home together in Berlin that summer.

Andrew Kent
David celebrates his thirtieth birthday
with Iggy Pop (standing), Romy Haag
and Coco Schwab (just out of view),
lAnge Bleu, Paris, January, 1977. This
is a guy who a year before was
supposedly out of his mind on cocaine,

says one friend from the time, and here

he was in sensible shoes, jacket flat
cap, just open and chatting to everyone.

Eduard Meyer
Everything said, We shouldnt be
making a record here. Berlins Hansa
TonStudio in 1976: set among the ruins
that evoked Brixton in 1947.

Eduard Meyer
David Bowie, Tony Visconti and Tonmeister Eduard Meyer, completing Low
at Hansa, October, 1976.

ITV/Rex Features
Filming Marc with old Mod friend Marc
Bolan, 9 September, 1977 (with
Bowies old bassist, Herbie Flowers,
behind). Their last public appearance
together was marred by a silly tiff that
epitomised the pairs intertwined
friendship and rivalry. Marc would die
in a car crash on Wimbledon Common
on 16 September.

Barry Plummer
Moving on: relaxing at Londons
Dorchester hotel, September, 1977, after
emerging from his Berlin seclusion.

Mirrorpix
David Bowie finally proves himself as
an actor on-stage, inhabiting the role of
Joseph Merrick in Elephant Man,
summer 1980. He enchanted his fellow
actors who nonetheless concluded his
was the most horrible, horrible life.

Getty Images

New Yorks Daily News shows John

Lennon signing Mark Chapmans copy of
Double Fantasy, 8 December, 1980.
Chapmans murder of The Beatles
singer, with whom David had recently
renewed his friendship, inspired
Bowies flight from New York to
Switzerland.

News Ltd Newspix/Rex Features

Hobo intellectual: Bowie filming Baal,

August, 1981, in a rare break from his
seclusion in Switzerland. The Brecht
play represented a farewell to Berlin
and underlined Bowies newly acquired
intellectual credentials but was
destined to be remembered as a flop.

Barry Schultz/Sunshine/Retna
David Bowie signs on the dotted line for
EMI, 27 January, 1983, in a $17m deal
that would today, says the A&R who
signed him, have record companies in a
line around the block.

 Denis ORegan/CORBIS
You have no idea its like theyre
feeding you the sun, the moon, and the
stars. David Bowie, bona fide
superstar, on the Serious Moonlight
tour.

17
I Am Not a Freak
He just had a tacky T-shirt, a pair of
jeans and a cardboard suitcase. It was
the most horrible, horrible life.
Ken Ruta

1977 had been a joyful year, but it was a strange

kind of joy, one many people wouldnt recognise.
As a teenager, David had avoided proper work,
but now it was more obvious than ever that as an
adult he enjoyed the worthiness of studying, of
good old Yorkshire graft. Hed dug deep into his
reserves of psychic stamina during the Spiders era,
with compelling results, but this second creative
streak was arguably even more impressive. There
would never be another twelve months in Bowies

life as productive as those that stretched from the

summer of 1976 to the summer of 1977, months in
which he recorded four landmark albums: The
Idiot, Low, Lust for Life and Heroes, all of
which would have a huge effect on the musical
landscape. David knew the significance of these
albums he was filled with a special kind of
optimism over that time, as Tony Visconti and
others recall, in words filled with a kind of
nostalgia. Yet even as he immersed himself in
work, David was filled with a sense that this
special period wouldnt last.
He had always moved on briskly when he
sensed his musicians had nothing more to offer
him. Yet he was even more ruthless with himself;
and even as he came to the last of his Berlin
albums, he was dismantling the lifestyle that gave
birth to them.
Immediately after the release of Heroes, David
embarked on an old-school publicity blitz. The
single itself was released in three languages,
evoking the carefree early days of The Beatles, and

Davids promotion of the record took him to

Rome, Amsterdam, Paris and London and even, in
September, to the Elstree TV studios just outside
of London, where venerable crooner Bing Crosby
was recording a Christmas special for ITV.
Swapping scripted jokes before duetting on Little
Drummer Boy, looking clean-cut and healthy,
David seemed strikingly similar to the twenty-twoyear-old whod camped around on Malcolm
Thomsons promotional film, back in 1969. But
while the dialogue seemed fake, the jokey
pleasantries and the engaging politeness were
genuine. Many of those who encountered him over
those weeks were put off their stride to find that
David, while serious, was easygoing and pliant,
not the assertive, rather megalomaniacal creature
on display early in 1976. He retained his
equilibrium even when faced with the most
ludicrous questions, like that posed by radio
interviewer John Tobler, in January 1978. Tobler
pointed out that, with Bing Crosbys death in
November, plus Marc Bolans tragic accident back
in September, Davids most recent collaborators

had both died soon after working with him. Do

you see anything sinister in that? Tobler enquired.
No, I dont, David replied with commendable
restraint, before mentioning that the next act on his
list for production, not termination was Devo.
His championing of the band helped them secure a
Warner Brothers deal, although time pressures
meant it would be Brian Eno who produced their
debut album.
In between the rounds of interviews, David
spent a quiet Christmas at Hauptstrasse. Coco
cooked goose for a cosy, celebratory get-together,
according to the Berlin friends who attended,
including Edu Meyer. But it would be their last
Christmas break in Berlin, and caused a public
spat with Angie, in an outburst that effectively
announced their marriage was over. The exchange
kicked off with Angie complaining to the Sunday
Mirrors Tony Robinson on 8 January, 1978, that
her husband had without my knowledge taken our
son from the Swiss house over Christmas. In fact,
shed left Zowie with Marion Skene while she
visited friends in New York. I really want David

to suffer, she told Robinson. Perhaps the only

way hell suffer is if I do myself in. Soon after the
first interview, she attempted suicide by downing
sleeping pills, then smashed all the glassware in
the house before throwing herself down the stairs,
breaking her nose. According to Robinson, Angie
apparently created so much commotion at the
Samaritans hospital that the woman in the
neighbouring bed, admitted after a cardiac arrest,
suffered a relapse.
Just six months before, David and Angie had
been happily playing pool in the Tschungle; both of
them with identical haircuts and trench-coats, like
brother and sister, says Esther Friedmann, Iggys
girlfriend. Angies outburst in the tabloid, attacking
her husband in public for the first time, was an act
of war and of desperation. It was a sign of her
isolation. As one German friend put it, She was
just helpless she had no one on her side. Wed
say Die Felle schwimmen weg your furs are
swimming away. * Everything is falling apart.
Angie blamed Coco for edging her out of her
husbands life, but by now her distaste for Davids

music and lifestyle could not be concealed: she

disliked Dostoyevsky, she detested flat caps, she
even hated the food he and Iggy sampled in Berlin
They ate offal! she exclaims today in disgusted
tones, as if this alone explains her estrangement
from her husband. Such distaste only speeded up
the inevitable, given Angies lack of interest in
sublimating her own life to Davids. Now, she told
Robinson, I have to seek a divorce.
Angies official exit made little difference to
Davids romantic life. Since separating from Ava
Cherry in the summer of 1975, hed relied on Coco
for many of his needs conversation, jokes,
protection and domestic necessities although by
now shed moved into her own little apartment in
the Hinterhof, like Iggy. In Berlin, both he and Iggy
developed the habit of disappearing for a couple of
days every now and then, going where the drugs
and girls were, says a friend. David had his little
muchachas that he would visit and Jim probably
had his. Coco would wind up looking for them all
over Berlin worried something had happened.
Bowie would in future years rarely comment on

his marriage to Angie; one of his most memorable

observations was that the experience was like
living with a blowtorch. While his public
criticisms were limited, his feelings about Angie
eventually verged on mutual hatred; he would
rarely mention her by name, and simply referred to
her as my ex-wife. Like Tony Defries, her role in
Davids rise to stardom, as well as her name,
would never be mentioned again, as she was
airbrushed out of his personal history.
Subsequently, the gruelling intensity of life with
Angie had a predictable effect on his future
liaisons, which he would try and keep casual.
Occasionally thered be the odd obsession. On tour
with Iggy in Vancouver, hed become besotted
with a boutique owner named Bessie beautiful,
African, just as striking as [Davids second wife]
Iman, according to Annie Apple, an old friend of
Iggys and hed begged her to come back to
Berlin with him. But after travelling on with him to
Seattle, shed been disturbed by the manic intensity
that surrounded David; even eating at a Shakeys
Pizza Parlour in the suburbs, Bessie noticed how

fans would steal his cigarette butts. Two days of

this was thrilling, but the idea of more sounded
horrific. Shortly afterwards David would date
another striking black woman, an ex-girlfriend of
Shep Gordons who stayed with him in Vevey for a
few days before being sent back home. Towards
the end of the year, David briefly dated Bianca
Jagger then still married to Mick with the kind
of exaggerated secrecy that ensured the news
spread far and wide. They made an attractive
couple, but Davids courtship of her didnt outlast
the forthcoming tour.
Instead, during his last months in Hauptstrasse,
away from his tour entourage, David revelled in
dressing anonymously, spending time with Zowie,
still wandering down to the Kreuzberg clubs,
smoking his way through three packs of Gitanes a
day, but also cycling on his Raleigh to pretty
normal places, talking about life and the books he
was reading, says Tangerine Dream drummer
Klaus Krger whom David called up that spring,
asking him if hed like to join Iggys band, shortly
after Iggy had given the Sales brothers their

marching orders.
At the end of January, 1978, David started work
on the movie that constituted his farewell to Berlin.
Just a Gigolo was the brainchild of David
Hemmings, the Blow Up stars second movie as a
director. David was at first enthused by the
production, which embodied many of his Berlin
obsessions and was filmed around his regular
haunts, including Caf Wien. Hemmings had
secured a remarkable coup, which helped draw
David into the venture, by signing up Marlene
Dietrich for her first film in eighteen years. David
had spent hours in Berlin, chatting to antique-store
owners whod known the reclusive star back in the
day; the prospect of meeting her was an intrinsic
part of the movies appeal.
Hemmings was ebullient and easygoing his
catchphrase was not too shabby, not too shabby
and David told friends he bonded more with the
old-fashioned, hard-drinking luvvie than he had
with the more intellectual Nic Roeg. But it wasnt
long before the shoot started to go awry. During a
celebratory dinner with Bowie, other crew

members, Iggy and Esther Friedmann, Hemmings

went missing. Something weird happened, says
Friedmann. [Hemmings] went somewhere and
never came back, people were looking all over.
And then David never got to meet Marlene. It
turned out instead of acting with her, he was acting
with a chair.
Hemmings explained later that Dietrichs brief
appearance in the movie would be filmed in Paris;
her half of the exchange with David was filmed in
a set recreating the Caf Wien, intercut with his
lines, delivered back in Berlin. The scene like
the movie was disjointed and irredeemably
stilted; still, from todays perspective, the movie is
a poignant last glimpse of the great German star,
while David manages to look fetching, carrying a
pig.
The fate of Just a Gigolo would typify Davids
cinematic career, which was more successful than
those of rock-star rivals like Jagger and Sting, but
never came close to justifying his new job
description, which he announced that year was
generalist a term obviously influenced by, but

lacking the charm of, Enos non-musician tag.

Picking out a decent script was a crapshoot in
which David would never quite beat the odds
and as Hemmings problems mounted, with finance
problems and negative reactions to his first edits
all publicised in the movie press, the prospect of
Davids own biggest tour to date provided a
welcome distraction.
Ranging across four continents, with seventy-eight
dates, many of them in huge stadia, the Isolar II
tour would put the flakey, stressful zigzagging
improvisation of the Ziggy era to shame. The show
was an ambitious, futuristic epic, showcasing the
largely electronic soundscapes of Low and
Heroes, but it drew deep on Davids musical
history. Clothes designer Natasha Korniloff was a
friend from the Lindsay Kemp troupe; guitarist
Adrian Belew was snaffled from Frank Zappas
band. Violinist Simon House had hung out with
David and Hermione in 1968 and played in High
Tide with Tony Hill, Davids guitarist from
Turquoise. Pianist Sean Mayes met David through

the band Fumble, whod rehearsed alongside him

at Underhill and supported David for March
1973s Aladdin Sane tour. Keyboardist Roger
Powell came from Todd Rundgrens Utopia; the
four joined Bowie stalwarts Alomar, Dennis Davis
and George Murray.
Carlos had spent six days running the band
through a set based on Low and Heroes
brandishing a baton, like a classical conductor, for
Warszawa at the Showco soundstage in Dallas
before David arrived on 19 March after a brief
holiday in Kenya and suggested they work up a
sequence of Ziggy songs. The seven-piece outfit
was competent, not too polished, with Mayes
stomping piano adding a vital roughness for a
string of shows that were rapturously received.
Over the three months, the shows settled into a
predictable routine. Each night thered be the
desperate race for a good restaurant, or a club that
was still open Sean Mayes often acted as
pathfinder, seeking out gay clubs where David or
the others could arrive later. Whereas at the time
o f Station to Station the cavalcade had centred

around Iggy and David, now Carlos acted as the

head of household, with David quiet and humorous
but rather distant. Meanwhile, business tensions
seemed to fizz around the margins of the little
crew, between Coco and Pat Gibbons, or Pat and
road manager Eric Barrett a seasoned pro,
famous for his work with Hendrix. The tensions
werent helped by what Simon House remembers
as mountains of blow. David rarely participated,
although on one memorable occasion in Paris on
24 May, he stayed up for a twenty-hour coke
bender after the first show; no one in the band saw
him until shortly before the second nights
performance. Simon House was chatting in the
doorway of a dressing room when he sensed what
felt like a kind of psychic vibration behind him.
Turning round, he saw the singer, pale and
clammy, his whole demeanour transformed but
that nights performance was storming.
It was on stage that the disparate English and
American band-members truly came together; an
hour and a half of bliss, punctuated by musical
communiqus or jokes. Dennis Davis was the key

perpetrator, on-stage and off; often hed attempt to

render the whole band helpless on-stage by, for
instance, playing a hugely extended drum fill,
rolling over every drum in his kit in turn in a kind
of mad extended rhythmic monologue that would
crease them all up. (Off-stage, he was much the
same, taking the mic whenever they were on the
bus and delivering a mad, surreal, pseudo-tourguide commentary.) David loved it; he seemed to
relish the vibrancy of his band, who would, in turn,
occasionally watch him, hypnotised by the
spectacle. David retained a distance from his
musicians Sean Mayes referred to him as his
Lordship but even today theres a kind of loving
fondness in their descriptions of sharing a stage
with him: He has some power, says House. An
aura that helps you transmit to thousands or
millions of people. Freddie Mercury had it too.
Maybe its just that they wrote these colossal
songs. But the music was always the one good
thing on this tour.
Adrian Belew shared with House the sense that
Bowie was somewhat troubled. Maybe he was

still doing some drugs, I dont know, maybe he

was tired. I remember him overall as amazing to
be around, but I did have a sense he was riding
through it, not totally happy.
Simon Houses memories of the tour are much
darker, for reasons unconnected with David. The
violinists partner, Sue, was ill with Huntingtons
disease. Her plight was all the more sad, for she
wouldnt acknowledge the problem which
eventually left her hospitalised, and insisted on
joining the tour. The illness manifests itself in
varying guises; in her case, shed act as if
aggressive or drunk, causing so much racket in
Tokyo that the hotel called the police. David, not
unreasonably, got upset if he saw Sue while on
stage. It made House feel like an outcast. Worse,
Bowie didnt address the issue directly so House
couldnt even explain Sues illness first-hand. In
those situations, as with most issues, it was Carlos
Alomar who brought an almost spiritual, soothing
attitude. Carlos is a psychologist, a spiritualist,
one of the most charming people in the world,
says House. We got on really well; I wouldnt

have enjoyed the tour without him. He was the one

would distract from the problems.
On the Station to Station tour, there was always
the sense that David was head of a family; this time
around, it seemed that he was head of a business
empire. Coco and Pat Gibbons formed the nucleus
of Isolar, Davids management company, which
changed in form over the next few years, but would
always have David at its apex. In those early days,
the fact that David effectively managed himself
marked him out as a maverick; but that would
change. The beginnings of the realisation that he
was a businessman, as well as an artist, came with
the announcement that he would release a live
album, recorded primarily in Philadelphia, while
the tour was still rolling across Japan. The double
album was intended both to scupper the efforts of
bootleggers and count towards Davids RCA
obligation. The albums financial motivations were
undoubtedly too obvious Jon Savage of Sounds
epitomised the reaction when he described Stage
as a combined summing-up, money-making and
time-gaining device but the audacity of the live

show was obvious, too, even in the albums first

version, released with its tracks sliced and diced
into chronological order.
By the time Stage was released on 8 September,
1978, David was using a short break from his tour
to work on the third album in a trilogy that hed
announced back in January. Trilogies, even when
rebranded as triptychs, as David called this set,
risk outstaying their welcome, and Lodger, for all
the randomness involved in its recording, lacked
the sense of risk and excitement that had pervaded
Low and Heroes. Some of that was down to the
location: Mountain Studio in Montreux was
carpeted, comfortable and bland compared to the
edgy, unsettling vibe of Hansa. To the session
stalwarts, like Carlos Alomar, Lodger was a more
intellectual, less inspired affair than Heroes.
For the previous album, Eno had used some of
his Oblique Strategy techniques on the instrumental
side, notably Sense of Doubt. On this project
working title Planned Accidents they were used
for the band tracks, most memorably in an exercise
where Brian would point randomly at a chord chart

on a wall and ask the musicians to play them. And

then Im like, This is not going to substitute for a
group chord chart which I can write, says Alomar,
and this experiment is stupid.
It sounded terrible, says House. Carlos did
have a problem, simply because hes very gifted
and professional [and] he cant bring himself to
play stuff that sounds like crap.
David encouraged the reluctant guitarist
Come on fellas, play along! although the
experiment was ultimately abandoned. It was
indeed not Brians finest idea, according to Tony
Visconti. Carlos does admit that on other
occasions, Enos Oblique Strategy cards, which
instructed random actions in order to bypass
creative blocks, worked as theorised. One time
Brian asked me something and I was blocked
because I didnt understand what he wanted, says
Alomar. Then one of the cards said something
like, Remember those silent moments, and then
another said, Think like a gardener. Some kind
of eclectic, weird reference. It worked or lets
say you find yourself accepting it. I would have

chosen other things to play but in hindsight it was

fun.
House was one of the few musicians who had
played with Eno outside of Bowie theyd
recorded together on Robert Calverts solo album
and loved Enos creativity: Hes always got an
idea, is always on the case. But on this project he
thought that Enos inspiration was ebbing away
and that the prime reason for his own use of
Oblique Strategies was to cope with his own
artistic block, not the musicians.
Enos preference seemed to be to experiment
almost endlessly, and on this session it was Bowie
who showed decisiveness, seizing on one idea to
keep things moving, impatiently overseeing the last
few days when the real creativity took place. The
real beauty of the album came from the way that
random ideas were scattered like confetti over
ordinary (and in some cases, repeated) chord
structures: Adrian Belews brilliantly warped
guitar on Boys Keep Swinging, for which the
band all switched to unfamiliar instruments, a trick
David and Carlos had first tried on Lust for Life;

Houses Byzantine violin, which influenced the

Turkish vibe of Yassassin, or the twisted
interplay of Alomars guitar and Viscontis
swooping strings on DJ. One night Visconti
downed a bottle of Tequila and wrote out an
arrangement for three mandolins, which became
Fantastic Voyage. It was a beautiful moment,
says House, who played the part along with Belew
and Visconti.
Once the frustrations of the first few days were
over, with the basic tracks montaged from tape
edits, the recording sessions were blissful. The
songs were sculpted into shape in the setting of an
idyllic Indian summer, during which the musicians
basked in the gorgeous view over Lake Geneva
and enjoyed chats with Eugene Chaplin, Charlies
grandson, whod bring over trays of beer. It was a
perfect fortnight, says House. Although the music
didnt ever perfectly gel. The violinist had high
standards, though, for he considered Low and
Heroes perfect albums, which couldnt be
bettered.
Adrian Belew arrived at a later stage of the

recording, once the backing tracks had been edited

into shape. He was warmed up with a compliment
first. I walked in, and David, Brian and Tony are
all smiling, like theyve a shared secret. Soon I
ask, Whats going on? And they said, When we
did all the tracks with Robert Fripp for Heroes
we did them as composite tracks. We took
something from each take, edited it all together to
make something that was impossible to play. And
you didnt know that, and you played it all live!
The trio were buttering him up; knowing he had
played the impossible, he was expected to deliver
the same on the session. Belew was sent upstairs
to the recording room, where Bowie, Eno and
Visconti watched him through a closed-circuit TV
camera, while the guitarists only contact with the
outside world were the instructions that came over
his headphones.
Belew had only just plugged in his Fender
Stratocaster when he heard someone tell him: The
drummer will go 1, 2, 3, then you come in.
What key is it? he asked anxiously.
Dont worry about the key, he was told. Just

play!
There were maybe three passes at the music,
which arrived in a torrent over his headphones,
then he was told that was it. As the recording went
on, that became the pattern: three goes at each
song, with the resulting parts edited into one
composite track. When I heard the final versions, I
had no memory of how I came up with these parts.
And meanwhile theyre going, This is the first
time this guy has been in a recording studio!
Today, Belew cant remember how any of the
individual songs came about, bar Boys Keep
Swinging, where they told him that Carlos was
playing drums. It was like a freight train coming
through my mind, he says of his now celebrated
solo. I just had to cling on.
Completed in March 1979 at New Yorks
Power Plant, Lodger would meet with a respectful,
slightly subdued reception on its release in May.
Visconti blamed the lack of enthusiasm on a rushed
mix. Much of the instrumentation did indeed sound
thin next to the ebullient clatter of Heroes; the
same applied to the emotional content, for where

its two predecessors were deep, Lodger was

restless and quirky. The album would attract
admiration rather than visceral love or hatred, but
its art-rock intellectualism sat neatly alongside
emerging bands like Talking Heads produced by
Brian Eno over the same timeframe or New
Romantic bands like Spandau Ballet, whose
Germanic name, sound and peg-leg pants were all
based on the 1978-model David Bowie.
After the break for the main Lodger sessions in
September, the tour continued through Australia
and Japan. For Belew in particular, the experience
was one of the most fulfilling in his career: We
got to Japan and it was amazing, like the
stratosphere of super-fame. Seven months of
touring with David really propelled me into being
the guitarist I became. He was the first person to
give me the freedom to go and explore, in front of
20,000 people. When you have that scenario, you
almost transcend yourself you dig deep and find
stuff you didnt know was there. I was on a
permanent high.

Lodger enjoyed a decent chart run, reaching

number four in the UK and number twenty in the
US, but for all the slackening in his chart
momentum, David was positioned perfectly,
alongside Eno, as a patron of the late seventies
New Wave. Now in his thirties, he seemed to be
moving on more quickly, from album to album,
than he had in his twenties and the
impressiveness of his achievement was underlined,
if it needed to be, by the fate of the two men who
were his closest peers as patrons of the New
Wave, namely Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.
After the triumph of Transformer, and its
densely wrought, emotionally gruelling successor
Berlin, Lous music had spiralled into self-parody
with Coney Island Baby and Rock and Roll Heart.
Reed was short of ideas and money, and by his
spring 1979 European tour he was drinking his
way through two pints of Scotch every three days,
swigged straight from the bottle.
Lou and David had met only occasionally since
the MainMan days, but an air of excitement
bubbled around Lou and his band in April 1979,

when they heard David would be showing up at

Lous Hammersmith Odeon date. The show was a
mess. Seeing David sitting on an amplifier case at
the side of the stage, Lou started screaming at his
musicians and switched the set around. But once he
made it through to the last number Lou was
ebullient, overjoyed to see his friend. The pair
hugged each other at the side of the stage, Lou
running his hands lovingly through Davids hair,
before the pair climbed into the tour bus, then set
off in search of a restaurant.
The dishes were on the table at the Chelsea
Rendezvous, when an infamous spat broke out. Lou
was flanked by his girlfriend Sylvia; David by
another woman and Lous guitarist Chuck Hammer,
who heard Lou ask David if he would produce his
next album.
Yes, David agreed, if you clean up your act.
Lou slapped David across the face, hard, once
on each cheek, screaming, Dont you ever say that
to me! Never say that to me! Lous manager, Eric
Kronfeld, wrestled him away, and for a few
minutes peace resumed, until suddenly Lou slapped

David again. This time Davids bodyguards pulled

them apart, and within seconds, Lou and his party
were bundled out of the restaurant.
The fracas, witnessed by an astonished Allan
Jones of Melody Maker and Giovanni Dadamo of
Sounds, would feature in the respective music
weeklies, but neither writer saw the next act of the
drama. An hour or two later, Reeds band were
back at the hotel and guitarist Chuck Hammer was
on the phone, describing the nights events to a
friend. Suddenly he heard footsteps in the corridor
outside, the sound of fists hammering on a
neighbouring door and then shouts of Come on
Lou I know youre in there!
For perhaps the first time in his life since being
clocked in the eye by George Underwood, the man
who had proclaimed he was not much cop at
punching in Kooks was attempting to pick a
fight. But the dark prince of New York decadence,
if he was in his room (no one found out), remained
cowering under his duvet, and after a few more
minutes of stomping up and down the hall, David
left the building.

Even a month later, when David told Iggy and

girlfriend Esther Friedmann about the fight, he was
still devastated, remembers Friedmann. The
incident showed the pitfalls of helping out people
you admired. Relations with Iggy, too, were
strained. The ex-Stooge had managed one fairly
successful album, New Values , under his own
steam, but since then hed been growing
increasingly depressed. David and Coco had
attempted to help, taking him and Esther on holiday
with them, including a trip to Kenya, but
sometimes when people are good to you its
worse, says Friedmann.
By September 1979 Iggy was in a bad way;
marooned in a residential studio in Wales, lost in a
haze of dope and booze, and seemingly unable to
finish the follow-up to New Values on his new
label, Arista. David drove out, with Coco, to help,
cheering up Iggy and the musicians with a long
monologue on Johnny Binden, the gangster, hangeron and owner of a legendarily huge cock which
hed displayed to Davids former MainMain
stablemate Dana Gillespie and Princess Margaret,

among others, on Mustique. The story ended up

being turned into a song, Play it Safe. Bowie was
dauntingly impressive like a creative
playmaster, says keyboard player Barry Andrews
but his visit seemed to highlight Iggys failure at
finding his way through the corporate maze. Both
men shared similar demons egotism, jealousy
and a tendency for a kind of musical post-natal
depression, once theyd completed a project but
Davids competitive nature always inspired him to
bounce back with a characteristic zest.
That competitiveness would add a satisfying
edge to Davids next project, for as Lou Reed hit
an artistic block on his next album, Growing Up in
Public leaving most of the music to collaborator
Michael Fonfara and writing the lyrics drunk, by
the studio pool David was schmoozing Lous
guitarist, Chuck Hammer. Lou had really been an
asshole [in London], says Hammer, and I was
really impressed by David. He was just the perfect
gentleman. But I always wondered, later on, if
David was trying at get back at Lou, trying to break
up his band a little bit.

Hammer would become a key contributor to

what many Bowie fans would regard as their
heros last truly great album. Theres much
justification for that view, for Scary Monsters still
sparkles today. Its intense, churning grooves sound
remarkably contemporary in retrospect, its the
obvious source of Blurs angular rock attack from
Park Life onwards but despite the complexity of
its arrangements, there are many moments of
unaffected simplicity.
In a signal that it was a move on from his
European albums, Scary Monsters was recorded
mostly at New Yorks Power Station, widely
regarded as the best-sounding American studio of
its time. But for the first time since Ziggys nod to
fifties rock n roll, the album also looked back,
both at Bowies own career and at the New Wave
kids who were coming up behind him.
Popular folklore has it that Bowie was intent on
scoring a hit record. Certainly thats the
impression that Chuck Hammer got, for he arrived
to witness a much more focused, almost
conventional work ethic compared to the last Eno

collaboration. Although now an established artist,

David was still recognisably the confident,
punctual young buck remembered by teenage
friends like The Manish Boys. For the recording
David, sporting a moustache, dressed in a fulllength leather coat and Japanese sandals,
brandished a clip-board, on which hed tick off
items on a musical to do list. Just as in the Iggy
sessions, he was entertaining, with that trademark
flirtatious jokiness, but with a formidable sense of
focus. Tony Visconti was almost scarily on it,
recording and planning ahead at the same time.
They were an absolutely unified team, says
Hammer, really impressively organised, there
was no chaos but it was very relaxed and
creative, too.
Hammer was called in primarily to work on a
song titled People Are Turning to Gold. He had
been working on a new technique of building up
synthesised
layers,
which
he
called
Guitarchitecture, and had sent a tape of his
experiments to Bowie. As he worked on the song,
which as yet had no lyrics, he quickly added

distinctive choir parts to the chorus, before

moving on to Teenage Wildlife and the gospelly
Up the Hill Backwards (the latter part didnt
made the cut, being replaced by Robert Fripps
superb, frenzied electric guitar). Chuck was very
experimental for us, it was 50/50 whether he
would make the cut, says Visconti, but as so often,
Bowie drew out an inspiring performance from the
young guitarist, to offset the conventional electric
guitar parts which Robert Fripp would record a
few days later for the rest of the album. Bowie
would wait another two months before writing
lyrics for the song, finally naming it Ashes to
Ashes: We did love it immensely, and knew it
was one of the major tracks, says Visconti.
For all the arresting sonic effects laced through
Ashes to Ashes, it was the songs melodic
inventiveness that underpinned its success: it
represented a return to Davids old-fashioned
songwriting, with a swooping melody in the verse,
and one of his characteristic pre-verse digressions
the shriek of nothing is killing me as well as
a conventional, but gorgeous middle eight, which

even seemed, with its never done anything out of

the blue, to address the age-old criticism of David
that he was premeditated and calculating.
As a UK number one single, Ashes to Ashes
seemed to signal that Bowie would dominate the
1980s as convincingly as he had the seventies. For
the video, an intrinsic part of the singles eventual
success, he commandeered the Blitz club scene a
scene which, of course, took Bowies style as a
template. In what was one of the first instances of
him interacting with a new generation of artists
whom hed influenced, he was again the epitome of
charm, dropping in for an evening with the clubs
host Steve Strange, then inviting him to the next
days 6 a.m. trip to Southend for the celebrated
video shoot, which reprised the Pierrot style of
Lindsay Kemp, again with a costume designed by
Natasha Korniloff. Now thirty-three, he was
relaxed, sociable and, says Steve Strange with
pride, when he snogged me, I got some tongue,
too. If David did intend to get back at Lou Reed,
he must have considered two-timing him with his
guitarist, and scoring a number one in the process,

had put him in his place.

For all those involved, the eventual success of
Scary Monsters was a poignant one. Even as a
host of groups copied Scary Monsters gritty
electro-funk mlange, most of those responsible,
including drummer Dennis Davis and bassist
George Murray, were looking for new jobs. But
for a brief session in Berlin, Tony Visconti would
not work with David again for another twenty-one
years. It is one of my favourite Bowie albums
ever, the producer points out. I considered it
going out on a high note.
For David, the album marked a happy change of
setting; he had never officially left Berlin, but he
was fired up by his return to New York, where he
could hang with a younger generation of arty New
Wavers, and also resumed his friendship with John
and Yoko, under happier, more relaxed
circumstances for both of them. Johns respect for
David had only increased with the success of
Fame, which had put the ex-Beatle back in the
charts. David still considered John, alongside
Mick Jagger, as his closest role model, but his

admiration for John was not intermixed with

rivalry, as it was with Mick. Lennon brought out a
better side of David, and he knew it. Happily, John
had started writing again. David admired the
unique lifestyle hed carved out, based around his
and Yokos elegant, white-carpeted, minimally
furnished apartment in The Dakota, by Central
Park, where John and Yoko could wander,
undisturbed.
As David was finishing what would become an
enduring classic, he was starting work on another,
more transient triumph. The Scary Monsters
sessions were in full flow when he took a call
from Jack Hofsiss, director of The Elephant Man,
the play based on the life of Joseph Merrick, which
David had seen in New York back in February.
Hofsiss needed a replacement for Philip Anglim,
who was quitting the title role. Bowie had been
bowled over by the play; given just twenty-four
hours to make his decision, he agreed to take on the
part.
David spent time rehearsing with Hofsiss one-

on-one before the cast convened for a fortnight of

intensive work in San Francisco. His recruitment
was quintessential celebrity casting, of the kind
still practised today, so when David arrived at the
Geary Theater the suspicion might have been that
Bowies fellow actors would have resented being
upstaged by an upstart rock n roller. Especially
Ken Ruta stalwart of the American Conservatory
Theatre, admirer of Gielgud and Tennessee
Williams who would play opposite him night
after night as Doctor Frederick Treves, Merricks
friend and benefactor. But Ruta is unequivocal
about his leading man. He was incredible. Right
on the money.
As one listens to the recollections of The
Elephant Man cast, echoes abound of Davids
time on the road with the Lindsay Kemp company,
a dozen years before. Back then, Kemp points out,
he was not starry at all, by God no. Ruta is
similarly emphatic: He was absolutely not a
show-off, an opinion shared by co-star Jeanette
Landis. He was a very pure actor. In fact, more
professional than the actor he replaced.

For just a few months, the setting echoed

Bowies late teens, when he was soaking up
experiences as part of Kemps tiny crew. With his
upbringing among the imposing Victorian edifices
of Brixton, or The Lower Thirds performances
alongside the bearded lady side-shows of Margate,
Bowie was well aware that the England that fted
and mocked Merrick still existed. Before
rehearsals, David had visited the London Hospital
to examine Merricks bones and the poignant
cardboard church hed constructed, which in
grander form is a centrepiece of the play, a
symbol of Merricks yearning for beauty and
peace. Most of the actors in the play, including
David, shared a sympathy for Merrick, heightened
by the presence in the audience of people who
sufferred from his condition. What they didnt
expect was to see such startling parallels between
the life of Merrick, circus freak, and that of their
leading man.
Parts of Davids routine were conventional. On
a Sunday, hed buy the New York Times and
carefully read through the book reviews. Then,

later in the week, hed lay each of the books that

had received raves out on a table in front of him;
soon he would have read all of them. At the end of
each week, thered be a modest present, a token of
affection, to his fellow actors. It depended on
your taste in diversion, says Ruta. I usually got a
nice bottle of red wine. Some days, once the play
opened in Denver, hed walk down to a little milk
bar hed found, just to relax or dance with some
younger company.
He seemed to master the routine on stage easily,
too. At first, there were plenty of little lapses, none
of which affected the flow. He hadnt acted on a
stage, so the acting technique wasnt completely in
his control, says Ruta, [but], thank God, he had
such an imagination, so the integrity was there.
There was a basic honesty. And the best gift, to
me, of any great actors is that thing about listening.
That doesnt happen all the time. It is an intriguing
observation; for when making Low, or Heroes,
what else had Bowie been doing but listening
picking out sounds and making sense of them?
His fellow actors found Bowies physical

transformation into Merrick equally impressive:

He seemed to have captured that better than all
the other ones who wanted to be glamorous. He
wasnt doing glamour. He was doing Merrick,
says Jeanette Landis. When Ken Ruta later
watched John Hurt play Merrick, swamped under a
prosthesis, in the movie of The Elephant Man, he
found the experience far less involving than seeing
David.
Even before Davids appearance, the play had
been a success; US president Jimmy Carter was a
fan of the book, and he and his wife had come to
meet the first cast. Yet when David took over from
Anglim, the upstart replacement lifted the play.
Whatever that thing is it was nothing that is
practised or manufactured it was there, says
Ruta. Varietys review of the opening night in
Denver bears out Rutas memories of the
performance. Bowie takes the stage with
authority, the review commented. Vocally, he is
both quick and sensitive.
When David had billed himself as the actor on
the sleeve of Hunky Dory, it had seemed a

pretentious claim. Now he earned that title. In the

nomadic world of the theatre, where actors make
friendships then move on to the next production, he
was a much more sympathetic figure to his
colleagues, who rarely like musicians expect
their working relationships to last. As far as the
Denver and Chicago cast members were
concerned, Bowie was a honey. Kind, good,
bright, and he worked for his money. Jeanette
Landis, his leading woman, was equally
impressed. His talent was bigger than his ego
which is rare.
Yet there was a divide between David and the
other actors. It was a divide that was hardly
perceptible in the week they spent in Denver,
breaking the theatres box office record. But from
the time the troupe hit Chicago on 5 August, 1980,
Bowies companions were shocked by the
conditions in which he was forced to live. Like
Merrick, he lived the life of a freak. It was fun in
Denver, which was more or less the Hinterlands.
In Chicago, it was scary, says Ruta. Mobs of
people, unrelenting. Jeanette Landis, too,

remembers, It was out of control.

Within days, David was forced to travel to the
Blackstone Theatre in a garbage truck, sneaking in
and out of the building via a basement window.
With fans stalking the citys main hotels, he stayed
instead in a flat above a nearby department store.
Only a couple of cast members knew its location.
At one point during the run, most of his clothes
were stolen: He just had a tacky T-shirt, a pair of
jeans and a cardboard suitcase, says Ruta. It was
the most horrible, horrible life.
The incessant attention from the fans, seen at
close quarters, was terrifying because it was
relentless. Throughout the Chicago run it would
never let up. For the first time in their careers,
Ruta and Landis worked closely with security
guards, hired to protect the cast. In this context,
Coco, seen as intrusive by so many of Davids
musicians, was a protectress, says Ruta.
Wonderful. She took care of him.
After the first few days, the cast would look
over the first few rows as soon as they walked on
stage, wondering who would be there. One night a

fan left an object on the stage: Leave it, dont

touch it, Bowie told Ruta, as they snatched a few
words in the wings. Caught up in the feverish,
intimidating atmosphere, Ruta obeyed him.
Towards the end of the Chicago run, Ruta
spotted one distinctive gaggle of fans in the front
row. About six girls, all weird looking, this was
before punk became crazy, all with dyed hair, all
holding purses in their laps. They were there
throughout the week, for the Saturday matinee, and
again for the evening performance. Then, as the
actors took the curtain call at the end of the
performance, all six girls rose, carrying their
purses, and headed for the stage. It was
instantaneous, they were all tackled from the sides
by I dont know how many plain-clothes men. And
they were carrying something in their purses,
metallic they were there to do something dirty. It
was just coo-coo that night. The girls were
bundled out of the building by security and Ruta
never found out their intentions, but he is
convinced they had set out to scare David or
worse.

When the show transferred to New York on 23

September, 1980 after a two-week break for
rehearsals and the installation of a higher-profile
supporting cast the media frenzy intensified, and
the curtain opened to a star-studded audience
including Christopher Isherwood, Andy Warhol,
David Hockney, Aaron Copland and Davids
Montreux neighbour and supposed lover Oona
Chaplin. The New York reviews were generally
effusive or respectful, and with Scary Monsters
nestled at number one in the UK chart, and twelve
in the USA, Bowie finally seemed to have reached
the status of cross-cultural figurehead to which,
despite too many protestations, he obviously
aspired. John, Yoko, Iggy, Esther and May Pang
were among the friends who pressed at the
dressing-room door after the first performances,
enthusing over his theatrical debut. Throughout the
month, journalists from weighty tomes, from the
New York Times , to London papers The Times and
Sunday Times, queued up for their allotted fifteen
minutes, invigilated by Barbara and Tim Dewitt. In
several of the interviews, he extolled the

anonymity of New York; like his friend John, he

loved how you could walk the city unmolested.
The most you get is, Hi Dave, hows it going?
he told The Times Patricia Barnes.
It was 8 December, exactly two weeks after The
Times interview appeared, that May Pang called
David Bowies Chelsea apartment to tell him
shed heard that John Lennon had been shot dead
by Mark Chapman. Coco answered the phone.
David is out, on a date, she told May. Get down
here, now. You shouldnt be alone.
David arrived at the apartment around the same
time as May. She remembers him screaming,
WHAT THE HELL, WHAT THE FUCK IS
GOING ON WITH THIS WORLD! over and
over, angry, devastated, numb. At times, for all of
them, there were flashbacks, or momentary
convictions that this was a prank, and hadnt really
happened; again and again theyd tell each other,
We have to be calm, we cant let our emotions
take over. After hed screamed himself to a numb
acceptance, David sat in front of the TV, absorbed

by the news footage of distraught fans milling

around The Dakota building and Central Park. He
was still up when May Pang left the apartment
around dawn. New York was strangely quiet as
she walked home.
David played out most of the three remaining
weeks of The Elephant Man, missing several
nights. It was awful, just awful, he would explain
two years later. A whole piece of my life seemed
to have been taken away; a whole reason for being
a singer and songwriter seemed to be removed
from me. It was almost like a warning. There
were rumours, never substantiated, that Mark
Chapman had attended a performance of The
Elephant Man, or that hed written down a list of
targets which included David Bowie and Keith
Richards. Whatever the truth, the murder of the one
man in New York with whom he most identified
left David with only one option: flight.

18
Snapshot of a Brain
Ive never worked with an artist like that
before or since. It was all beautiful
images. We went to peoples houses that
he knew had certain things it was like
fact
finders,
treasure
hunters,
conquistadores looking for gold.
Nile Rodgers

Just three years before, the main fixtures in

Davids life had been rock-star buddies and enfant
terrible artists, his main entertainment boozing and
exploring bullet-riddled hotspots. In the summer of
1981, this was a distant memory. In its place were
calm walks in the heights above Lake Geneva, and
civilised drinks with Eugene Chaplin: a cheery,

relaxed character who looked like a rather more

rotund version of his celebrated comedian father.
Most novel of all, Davids house resounded to the
hubbub of kids.
For several years now, Zowies social life had
revolved around making friends with the children
of musicians or studio staff, all under the devoted
care of Marion Skene, the nanny whod taken care
of him for nearly eight years. Although Zowie had
stayed with David for much of the Berlin period,
he was more than conscious of how his often
absentee role affected his son. Now, in the tiny
familys last summer in the house at CorsiersurVevey, Zowie had unhindered access to his dad
and Davids array of video equipment. Later, hed
vividly recall using his fathers broadcast-quality
U-Matic tape recorder, the size of a shopping
trolley, for Star Wars parties at which he and his
friends would watch George Lucass films, with
each film spread across two or three tapes. It was
the first time the ten-year-old had enjoyed a proper
chance to make friends although it turned out the
idyllic sojourn would be relatively brief, for

David a conventional father later enrolled him

at the notoriously spartan boarding school
Gordonstoun, a favourite of English royalty.
Zowies education was a typical example of the
conservatism hidden behind Davids supposedly
unconventional exterior; in this respect, as in
several others, he seemed to show the influence of
his own father. Even in his Haddon Hall days
David had surprised friends, like Mark Pritchett,
when it turned out Mark had skipped a school
athletics event. You should have gone to that its
important, David had admonished him. As a
father, he was definitely of the you wont get your
pudding till youve eaten your vegetables school,
but not bossy hed reason with Zowie, almost
like he was a friend. As for real friends, they were
few. Iggy would call and ask his advice, but there
were no real peers David could call on when he
was in the same position. Corinne was the most
zealous, but eventually David came to the
conclusion he didnt make friends that easily. Later
in life, hed realise that the only friends who
stayed with him were those hed known in

Bromley, people like the kind, unflappable George

Underwood: There are about half a dozen
[friends] that I would think of as close in the
accepted sense, i.e. would I reach out to them in a
time of real crisis? he would tell his wife Iman,
many years later, reflecting on how his males
friends in that group all go back to my teenage
years.
Isolated, but for Zowie, in Switzerland, David
turned to professionals for help. His visceral,
encompassing fear in the wake of Lennons murder
was not at all an affectation it was real,
according to those who knew him. While Keith
Richards started carrying a gun, David hired a new
bodyguard, this time one who was literally trained
to kill. His main muscle was named Gary, an exNavy SEAL. It turned out that in his time with
David, Gary never got to demonstrate his talent for
despatching people using only a spoon or other
household implement, so hed fill in the time by
running flabby, thirty-something rock musos from
Davids band through fitness routines between

overdubs in the studio.

Next, David started to rethink every aspect of
his own relationship with his fans. He found and
attended a course which trained media figures on
how to deal with the public: it showed how to deal
with casual encounters on the street, and mapped
out danger signs in letters or other communications
code-words that signified latent stalkers or
killers. Stars were advised not to respond to some
cues; in extreme cases, they were told to change
their address.
Davids own fan correspondence, it turned out,
was packed with the danger signs. One such letter,
from several fans writing together, opened with the
typical comments about lyrics, make-up and
fashion. Several letters later, his correspondents
had progressed to informing him of a friends death
We dont blame you, they informed him. When
David showed the letter to his advisers, they told
him to move house.
Davids new-found awareness of his own
mortality not only inspired him to spend more time
with Zowie, he also re-established contact with his

own mother. He and Peggy stayed together over

Christmas 1980, and remained in regular contact
from then on. Ive gotten closer to her, he
remarked later. I think the recognition of the
frailty of age makes one more sympathetic to the
earlier strains of the parentchild relationship. In
contrast, Zowies interaction with Angie was
limited. David and Angie had fought a lengthy
battle through the Swiss courts, with Angie
represented by celebrated palimony lawyer
Marvin Mitchelson, who later claimed to have
climbed a Swiss mountain in pursuit of Bowie. It
was a tough case, with witnesses like Marion
Skene testifying to Angies maternal shortcomings.
Faced with such opposition, Mitchelson secured a
settlement of just $700,000 when the divorce was
finalised in February 1980: a derisory figure from
todays perspective for a woman who was
undoubtedly crucial to the creation of Ziggy. Once
a ten-year gagging order on discussing the divorce
had expired, Angie blamed Corinne for most of her
troubles, accusing Schwab of first floating the
notion of a move to Switzerland, so David could

take advantage of its sexist legal regime.

Angies anger at Coco seemed to outweigh her
grief at losing Zowie, for her contact with him was
limited by the terms of the settlement. The years
following her divorce were torrid ones. By 1983,
twelve-year-old Zowie had taken the name Joey,
and in the summer of 1984, after staying with
Angie and boyfriend Drew Blood at their Lower
East Side tenement, he decided to break off contact
with his mother. Angie blamed David he used
his millions to poison Zowie against me but
Tony Zanetta, who was there for Joey and Marion
Skenes visit over a sweltering New York summer,
witnessed messy scenes culminating in a screaming
match. It was hard for him maybe if Angie had
devoted herself to him that summer It was very
sad. Whether or not David helped inspire Joeys
estrangement from his mother, he made little effort
to conceal how much he detested his ex-wife,
whom he described as having as much insight into
the human condition as a walnut and a self-interest
that would make Narcissus green with envy.
*

Throughout the first half of 1981, David revelled

in his seclusion; now, the focus and dedication that
had usually been directed at his music was applied
to seeing [Zowie] grow and be excited about
the future. There was just one musical venture that
summer, for which he only had to stroll down the
road: the previous year, hed agreed to collaborate
on the theme song for Paul Schragers remake of
Val Lewtons classic movie Cat People. The song
was Bowies first and only collaboration with
Giorgio Moroder, whose work hed discovered
back in Los Angeles. The Italian electro pioneer
was best-known for the chattering sequencers of
songs like Donna Summers I Feel Love, but for
this song he constructed a bleak, minimalistic
soundscape, based on the simplest of two-chord
changes. Bowie recorded his languorous, hypnotic
vocal over Moroders backing track at Mountain
Studios; the opening minutes would count among
the most magnificent, and restrained, of his career.
A modest success on its release the next April,
Cat People (Putting Out Fires) would become
one of the most overlooked Bowie gems until

Quentin Tarantino unearthed it for his Nazi

splatter-movie, Inglourious Basterds, in 2009.
It was during his visits to Mountain which
eventually became a second home once he
negotiated his own, off-peak, David Bowie
discount that David reacquainted himself with a
fan-turned-rival who was recording in the main
casino studio.
David had met Freddie Mercury back in the
summer of 1970, when the Queen singer worked on
a stall in Kensington Market and fitted Bowie with
a pair of suede boots. Introduced by their mutual
friend, ex-Beatstalker Alan Mair, Freddie had
shyly mentioned he was rehearsing with a new
band. David, then disenchanted with Ken Pitt, had
replied, Why would you want to get into this
business? Fortunately Freddie had ignored him,
but over the next few years would take more than a
few leaves out of the Bowie book. Queen turned up
regularly at Bowie shows, recorded at Trident and
hired MainMan photographer Mick Rock, while
the influence of Mick Ronsons pioneering work
on songs like The Supermen was readily

discernible in Brian Mays trademark multilayered guitar style.

According to Mercurys personal assistant Peter
Freestone, Bowie only realised Queen were in
Mountain working on their R&B-flavoured album
Hot Space by chance. Asked to add backing vocals
on the song Cool Cat, David stayed for a
marathon session in which Queens song Feel
Like was transformed into Under Pressure.
David contributed the bulk of the lyrics, set over
drummer Roger Taylors descending chord
sequence. By now, Mercury had developed more
of an ego than in his market-stall days, and it was
the Queen drummer who was at the heart of the
session, interacting with the interloper. Roger and
Bowie got on very well, according to Freestone,
although the lyrics and title idea came from
Freddie and David.
David was charming, polite, sensitive in his
dealings with these four relative strangers, but also
remarkably confident, just as he had been in his
youth, showing his songs to bands like The
Beatstalkers, certain theyd accept them. It was

hard because you had four very precocious boys

and David, who was precocious enough for all of
us, says Brian May. David took over the song
lyrically. Its a significant song because of David
and its lyrical content I would have found that
hard to admit in the old days but I can admit it
now. David championed the song, encouraging
Freddie, and contributing a classic, swooping
melody, as well as one of his own distinctive,
reflective middle-eight sections (the terror of
knowing what this world is all about).
Queen were uncertain about the track, even after
Bowie and Mercury re-worked their vocals and
mixed the recording at The Power Station in New
York, a fortnight later John Deacons distinctive
bassline was added at the same session, hummed
to him by David. Brian May was particularly
unhappy, recalling the fierce battles around the
mix, and his own misgivings about the songs
release as a single; instead, it was Queens record
company, EMI, that pushed the collaboration,
which finally hit the streets that September and
would became Queens second number one, hitting

the top of the UK charts on 21 November, and

number twenty-nine in the US a few weeks later.
It was a satisfying coup for David, helping craft
another hit from behind the scenes, as he had for
many others, all the more so given his sudden
disappearance from the music scene. He was
happy to relinquish Under Pressure to Queen it
would take persistent persuasion to get him to
perform the song, decades later but another
incentive for him to take a back seat was the fact
that his contractual obligation to Tony Defries
wouldnt expire until October 1982; Queen were
welcome to take the mechanical royalties on the
record, rather than his former manager. Instead, he
would lie low for a year, venturing out only to
work on a project that was of interest mainly to
academics, and would produce one of the
quirkiest, most overlooked and in its own way
perfect records of his career.
The project was the brainchild of Alan Clarke, a
brave, gritty director best-known for the
controversial movie Scum. Early in 1981, he had
discussed the notion of a TV version of Bertholt

Brechts first full-length play, Baal, with BBC

producer Louis Marks. Clarke planned a minimal,
studio-based production of the 1918 play, using a
pioneering split-screen effect for Brechts
trademark Verfremdungseffekt in which the actor
directly addresses the audience, commenting on
events.
The play was ambitious bordering on the
dangerous, says Louis Marks. But I had great
confidence in Alan Clarke; he was a great
director. From the start, Clarke, Marks and writer
John Willett were preoccupied with the casting of
the central character. The three debated Steven
Berkoff and Barry Humphries (Willett admired
Dame Edna Everages demonic intensity) before
the writer suggested Bowie; he knew of his work
on The Elephant Man, and guessed he might be
interested in pre-1933 Germany and even in
Brecht. He guessed right: Clarke and Louis Marks
went to see Bowie in Vevey in mid-July. When
they came back, we had our Baal, says Willett.
The casting was a fascinating one: the notion of
an amoral hobo poet shagging his way around the

world was appropriately close to Davids nomad

sex-junky existence with the Manish Boys a time
that, from his safe Swiss retreat, seemed a world
away. Bowie didnt hesitate, says Marks. The
chat at his house was very brief and then it was
simply down to practicalities, him and Alan talking
about how they would do it.
Marks, Clarke and Willetts experience with
David closely mirrored that of The Elephant
Mans crew. Bowie was a trouper, but the
atmosphere around him was disturbing. The
project was shrouded in obsessive secrecy; once
rehearsals started the crew were ordered not to
reveal Bowies involvement. Two security guards
stood by the studio door throughout; the sign on the
entrance to BBC Studio 1 read simply Classic
Play.
Producer Louis Marks was a Doctor of
Philosophy, an Oxford-educated expert on
renaissance studies; John Willett was the Englishspeaking worlds foremost Brecht scholar and
translator, whod met the playwright in 1956
both of them were bona fide intellectuals. Once

David had arrived in the rehearsal space in Acton,

the trio sat down to discuss the play. Their
conversation turned to the look of the play; Willett
explained how he saw it as reminiscent of the
illustrator Masereel. How wonderful! David
replied, before mentioning how hed tracked down
some of his prints in Berlin, part of his growing
collection of expressionist art. They discussed the
Brecht recitatif singing style. I think of it rather
like plainsong, Bowie murmured. Willett was
shocked; the comparison made complete sense, but
had never occurred to him. They continued talking
about Brecht and the Neue Sachlichkeit art
movement the stripped-down, austere reaction to
expressionism and Bowies understanding
seemed just as sophisticated.
As they walked away from one discussion,
Willett turned to Marks, He knows more about
Germany as a whole and Brecht in particular
than anyone we know! They didnt discuss
whether David knew more than the two of them
but it was a distinct possibility.
A decade before, David absorbed his culture

from people, whether William Burroughs or Andy

Warhol, skipping around different subjects like a
gadfly. It was in his cocaine period that hed
learned to focus, spending endless hours pondering
alien visitations or Nazi folklore; yet when hed
put that focus to real use, studying in Berlin
galleries or poring over artist monographs, hed
transformed himself from a sophisticated namedropper to a figure who could impress and even
intimidate Oxfords finest intellectuals.
As discussions gave way to rehearsals, the pair
were impressed by how Bowie took command of
Brechts music, imposing sense and rhythm on the
words. Yet, as an actor, he was totally
unconventional. An actor would build up a
performance from scratch, adding or modifying
elements with each rehearsal. David, instead, gave
a set of completely separate, different
performances. Each version seemed complete, full
of ideas: Nothing he said was routine, says
Willett.
There were four weeks rehearsal in Acton
before the one-week shoot, which reached a

climax on the final day, 12 August, when Clarke

had to tie up the split-screen shots and the opening
Hymn, which was crucial both to set up the play
and to establish Bowies credibility as the central
character. The pressure was on as Bowie started
singing the hymn; then suddenly there was a
tremendous banging through the studio wall. Clarke
stopped the cameras, and sent a messenger round
to Studio 2 to tell them to be quiet; but the door to
Studio 2 was locked. With the hammering echoing
around the studio, Louis Marks phoned BBC
administration, and the noise stopped for a few
minutes; only to start again, from a slightly
different location. The cycle repeated itself several
times, and tempers were frayed, before Bowie
announced, I know how to stop this!
He strode into the centre of the studio, put his
hands to his mouth, and shouted, Lunch!
Suddenly, the tension evaporated. The noise did
reoccur, but the filming continued, with actors and
crew energised once more, and Clarke wrapped up
the shoot, confident hed pulled off a difficult
coup.

By now, Bowie seemed to exert almost a

superhuman influence over his distinguished
colleagues; but he wasnt poncy, rather he was
enthusiastic and sincere. When working on the
songs for the TV play, hed collaborated closely
with Dominic Muldowney, a pioneer in
interpreting Brechts music. Towards the end, hed
confided in Muldowney that hed like to record
some of the material in Berlin; would Muldowney
like to oversee the arrangements? Muldowney
leapt at the chance; writer John Willett volunteered
to come along, too. Really, you will? asked
David Bowie, with his dazzling charm. Youd be
doing me a terrific favour! He went on to explain
that he wanted the recordings to serve as his final
album for RCA. Muldowney would help not only
bring one distinguished era of David Bowies
career to a close, but free him for the next one, too.
A few weeks later, Bowie assembled with
Muldowney, Willett, Tony Visconti and Edu
Meyer for Davids final recording at Hansa Studio
2. It was a relaxed session, relying heavily on the

eight-strong band of Berlin musicians assembled

by percussionist Sherry Bertram, which included
plenty of Brecht old-timers, notably a seventy-fiveyear-old bandoneonist whod played in the first
productions of The Threepenny Orchestra.
Bowie arrived late for the recording, which
meant Muldowney and Visconti laid down the bulk
of the backing tracks before his arrival.
Muldowney had an unrivalled pedigree in
classical and Brecht-related music, having studied
with composer Harrison Birtwistle, but was
staggered at the creativity on display: even as he
arranged one string part, Visconti was already
compressing and EQ-ing the sound, and suddenly
these four strings sounded like four tanks.
With the backing tracks complete they cleared
the hall, and Visconti and Meyer set up
microphones in each corner so that they could
record David filling the Meistersaal with his
voice, like the cabaret acts whod performed there
in the 1920s, finishing the entire set within three or
four hours. It was a masterclass in technique, says
Muldowney. The stand-out was The Drowned

Girl, which is like an Ophelia song, where she

dies in the river. Hes singing about Her slow
descent below the water, right down in the bass
baritone. Then halfway through he jumps up the
octave. I play this song to composers at the Royal
Opera House on courses. When he sings up to the
word smoke its got smoke all around it, its
cloudy. Then we get to the k of smoke and you
can see again. Its an absolute tutorial in how to
paint a text. The only other person I know can do
that is Frank Sinatra.
After the days singing masterclass, David spent
that night giving Muldowney a cultural tour. While
the exhausted Visconti slept, David and
Muldowney turned up first at a club in Kreuzberg
where the clientele were draped over dentists
chairs; next came a New Wave club, the
Dschungel, where David danced with a beautiful,
elfin, Ziggyish boy, flirtatiously sharing the same
cigarette with him. Later still they were knocking
on an imposing basement door: the peephole slid
open, David was given a delighted welcome, and
he ushered Muldowney into a transvestite bar.

Chatting to the stunning creatures serving drinks, he

admired the gilt mirror that ran the length of the
bar. Thank you, they told him, it was made for
Hermann Gring. Around four in the morning,
Muldowney returned, spent, to his hotel on the
KuDamm, and left David going strong, in his own
goodbye to Berlin.
Davids anonymous exploits in Berlin were in
stark contrast to the media frenzy that greeted the
crew on their return to London. The news that the
star, out of view for a year now, was appearing in
an obscure German play inspired headlines and
spreads in the Daily Express, the Sun, and most of
the UK press. The Daily Mirror explained: He
plays a singing poet with a huge appetite for sex
and wine called Baal by German a
typographically challenged prcis which perhaps
did not fully communicate the plays significance.
Clarke and Willett now discovered that the BBC
had retitled the play Bowie In Baal, and delayed
transmission until the spring, when they could
showcase Bowies presence with a cover story in

the Radio Times. There was a spat, as producer

Louis Marks tried to fight the decision, but failed.
An obscure play, previously of interest only to
academics, was now being promoted as a ratingsgrabber; Bowie was now overshadowing both
Brecht and Baal.
The plays transformation into a prestige
production brought its own repercussions. A few
weeks before the transmission date, 2 March,
1982, Louis Marks discovered ITV had scheduled
an equally prestigious play, starting that same
evening but a half-hour earlier. A Voyage Round
My Father, John Mortimers poignant, funny
memoir of the decline of his cantankerous barrister
father featured Laurence Olivier in one of his last
and best-loved roles. The BBC was
comprehensively up staged; ITV trounced Baal
both in ratings and press coverage although the
reviews of Bowies acting were in the main
complimentary. Clarke and Willett later agreed the
production was hampered by its compromise
between naturalism and minimalism it needed
more edge and power, according to Willett yet

even today it remains the definitive interpretation

of this fascinating, immature work. I have no
reservations about it today, says Marks, the figure
who more than anyone steered the project through
the BBC bureaucracy. I was thrilled to be
involved.
Baal was destined to become a lost artefact,
often discussed by Brecht scholars. Today, only
the CD remains to document what was not only one
of Bowies bravest artistic efforts, but would also
constitute his final Berlin document. The
Hauptstrasse lease had expired in February 1981,
so he stayed in his old haunt, the Schlosshotel
Gerhus, and went to visit Esther Friedmann, whose
relationship with Iggy was splintering as Iggys
own life was falling apart. Hed been booted off
Arista Records, was back on cocaine, and stayed
drunk most of the time to swamp his awareness that
his music, the one thing that had always sustained
him, sounded awful. Esther had seen David help
Iggy out for years; now he sat playing piano in her
new apartment in Kreuzberg, counselling her. You
know a lot about art, he told her. You should do

it for a living. Friedmann followed his advice,

and later built up a thriving gallery business.
The Baal EP was Davids final RCA release; it
reached number twenty-nine in the UK album
charts in the spring of 1982. It was now an open
secret that David was simply waiting out his
contract with RCA the motive was not just
financial, for the companys shortcomings had been
obvious from his very first US tour, with their
patchy efforts at arranging local airplay and
promotion. The labels lack of enthusiasm for Low
had not eased his disenchantment. Davids solution
was simply to ignore RCA while he pursued other
business.
It wasnt long before other business started to
stream in, for after a year in Vevey, David was
getting itchy feet. With recording on the
backburner, he turned again to acting. It had been
Tony Defries who claimed he would make David
into a mainstream entertainer, like Liz Taylor, and
with two major movie projects in 1982, it looked
like David was getting close. Both were quirky

concepts, although the one that looked the most

commercial turned out to be the bigger failure.
Tony Scott, a successful commercials director,
was hoping to make a leap into cinema like his
brother Ridley who had graduated from selling
Lyons Maid ice-cream back in 1969, with an ad
that coincidentally featured a young David, to
directing Alien and Bladerunner. Tonys first shot
at the mainstream was The Hunger, a slick, glossy
vampire movie based on a novel by Whitley
Strieber. With its MTV-influenced visuals,
bombastic soundtrack, a guest appearance by Goth
band Bauhaus and scenes shot in the nightclub
Heaven, it was exactly the kind of film in which
youd expect to see a rock star attempting to cross
over into acting, and its combination of
sensationalism and dreary predictability ensured
this sensual classic of perverse fear was a boxoffice flop on its release in April 1983.
Eventually, however, its Goth glossiness helped
the movie build a cult following, inspiring a
nineties TV spin-off, which helped hatch a
longstanding relationship between Tony Scott and

Davids son.
Joey who would eventually revert to his first
name, Duncan was on set for some of the filming
o f The Hunger; it would become a formative
experience in his eventual career. For Bowie,
though, his longest stay in England since 1973
brought the family skeletons dancing out of the
closet. Both his mother Peggy and his aunt Pat had
long nursed resentments, feeling that they, and
Davids half-brother Terry, were being neglected.
Peggy had phoned Charles Shaar Murray at the
NME back in 1975 to share her grievances, and
was at the point of going public again. Davids exmanager, Ken Pitt, had remained in contact with
her, and dissuaded her from approaching the
tabloids. Although admirably circumspect, Pitt
sees Peggys boredom and constant demand for
attention as problems that would never be solved.
I would be on the phone to her quite often, with
some issue or other. In the end I used to say to her,
Peggy, if David were a plumber, you wouldnt
even be talking about him, would you? Pitts
influence and Davids more consistent efforts to

ensure Joey remained in touch with his

grandmother helped keep Peggy out of the press,
but his aunt Pat was not so easily controlled,
contacting the Sun and the Star that July to tell
them that David was callous and uncaring and
needs to face up to his responsibilities.
Pats anger was prompted by the increasingly
sad condition of Terry. Davids half-brothers
outlook had improved after his marriage to Olga in
1972, but had again deteriorated in recent years.
Pat would later accuse David of ignoring Terry
and his wife, although her account is challenged by
Davids friends, including Mark Pritchett, who
remembers seeing the couple at Haddon Hall. Pats
anger derived from the belief that she had taken on
the lions share of caring for Terry; her
relationship with her own husband, Tony, suffered
under the strain of Terrys illness, which had
reportedly resulted in fist fights between Terry and
his uncle. Although often accused of ignoring
Terrys fate, David had wrestled with the issue of
his brother, opening up to confidants and even
writers such as Timothy White, whom he told,

Ive never been able to get through to [Terry]

about how he really feels. I guess nobody has.
David did go to see his half-brother during his stay
in London; his visit was followed by an unhelpful
headline in the Sun, blaring: Im terrified of going
mad, says Bowie.
Pats attacks on Bowie, over this period and
thereafter, ensured his reputation as a manipulative
ice man, who used and then discarded family and
friends without qualm. There were indeed many
instances of his unashamed devotion to Numero
Uno, mate! Yet his ruthlesness usually had a
musical motive outside of his own career, he
was genuinely kind to people like Esther
Friedmann, Iggy Pop, Tony Sales and others. Some
of Davids accusers, notably his ex-wife, insist
that each and every example of Davids
compassion was self-serving, aimed at shoring up
his own credibility. Yet there are plenty of
examples of help given and not publicised;
notably, David continued to pay the school fees of
Marc Bolans son, Rolan, once he realised the
Bolan estate would not do so. In other instances,

Bowie helped with his time, not money, searching

out specialised medical treatment for the son of a
writer friend. Angies depiction of David as a flat,
one-dimensional, selfish character does not ring
true.
Selflessness and positivity often co-exist with
pettiness and grudge-bearing David was always
capable of both. An example of such duality was
the way Davids artistic bravery and contempt for
convention was hampered by his unhealthy habit of
reading reviews or features on himself. He could
harbour resentment at perceived slights or
inaccuracies for years. One issue of MOJO
magazine featured Mick Ronson on its cover in
1997: two years later, David was still complaining
about the magazine that said Mick wrote all my
songs! irritated that colleagues such as Tony
Visconti had highlighted Micks influence on
Davids early albums.
It was such haughty pronouncements,
exacerbated by the flunkies and yes-men who
surround most stars, which helped inspire his
nickname The Dame, first coined by Smash Hits

writer Tom Hibbert in the early eighties. Yet, once

David was liberated from his flunkies, he could
often confound expectations. That March, Carol
Clerk, then a news editor for Melody Maker, spent
an afternoon drinking poteen with The Exploited
and other assorted acquaintances in Matrix
Studios, where they were celebrating finishing
their Troops of Tomorrow album. Come opening
time in those days pubs closed for a couple of
hours in the late afternoon they hit a few pubs
and late at night, really plastered, says Clerk,
we arrived at Gossips [nightclub]. And Bowie
was in there, with some discreet security. We took
a table and to our amazement, given the terrible
state of everyone, Bowie asked if he could join
us.
It turned out that Bowie wanted to know all
about The Exploited, thrash punk and Mohican
fashion, and he was exactly as earnest and
charming as he had been when pumping the Pork
actors for information, a decade before. He sat
with the chaotic, droolingly drunk group for hours,
politely buying rounds. The punks were impressed

by how the power of stardom ensured the bar staff

for the first and only time in my life brought
drinks to the table and kept the club open beyond
its 3 a.m. closing time. One of the few details
Clerk could still recall the next morning was the
way Bowie worried about Linc, the bass player
from Chelsea, whod passed out under his leather
jacket before David arrived at the table.
Throughout the night, Bowie kept lifting up Lincs
jacket, checking that Linc was still breathing, like
an ultra-cool mother hen, until all the parties
finally staggered home.
It was in his guise as fan that David was always
the most engaging; any perceived snootiness would
evaporate in his boyish enthusiasm. As ever, there
was no dividing line between his enthusiasms and
his own work; they blended into each other
imperceptibly. One perfect example happened
during that July, when David returned to Montreux
after winding up the shoot for The Hunger, just in
time for that years Jazz Festival. This was the
year that Stevie Ray Vaughan, then a struggling
blues guitarist, had been championed by famed

Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler, who persuaded

Montreux mastermind Claude Nobs to present
Vaughan and his band, Double Trouble.
The unsigned outfit played on the acoustic stage,
where Vaughans clanky, raw Texas blues brought
boos and catcalls from an audience expecting cool,
quiet jazz. Although their reception did kinda hurt
our feelings, says bassist Tommy Shannon, the
blues trio were so fired up by their first overseas
show that they later carried their amplifiers
downstairs to the bar, where they jammed until
dawn. As the sun came up, they noticed a figure
drinking at the counter: they knew it must be David
Bowie He just had this look, says Shannon.
Stevie and the band were not starstruck they
hardly knew Bowies music but they were
impressed by his charm, the way hed stayed up
until dawn to talk to them: He was just real nicelooking, and handled himself well. He sat with
them for a while, speaking mostly to Stevie, talking
about guitar playing. Davids enthusiasm helped
banish the memory of the audiences boos, as did
the response of singer-songwriter Jackson Browne,

whod also seen the show and offered them free

recording time in his home studio.
Davids respite in Montreux turned out to be a
brief one. Despite having planned to make a single
movie in 1982, a project that hed discussed
several years before suddenly spun into action.
Director Nagisa Oshima, best-known for In the
Realm of the Senses, was planning a film based on
the memoirs of Laurens Van Der Post. Oshima had
approached singer Kenji Sawada to play the role
of POW commander Yonoi; Sawada dropped out,
to be replaced by Japanese musician Ryuichi
Sakomoto, but only after hed suggested David
Bowie for the part of Jack Celliers. Oshima liked
casting singers or other performers without the
peculiarities actors often acquire and
approached David during his Elephant Man run.
He readily agreed. Producer Jeremy Thomas had
already worked on two films with Nicolas Roeg;
Paul Mayersberg, who wrote the script with
Oshima, had scripted The Man Who Fell to Earth,
and once Bowie was on board, rewrote the part
with David in mind. Thomas remembers that

Bowie knew everything about Oshima. Once he

understood Oshimas interest in him, he was
interested in the film. It was an ideal situation: he
was immediately on board, saying, Tell me when
and where and Ill be there.
The film was intriguing, the antithesis of a
conventional prisoner of war drama. Three key
roles were played by comparative novices: Bowie
as Celliers, Ryuichi Sakomoto as Captain Yonoi
the commandant who is obsessed with him and
comedian Beat Takeshi as Sergeant Hara. At the
centre of this nexus is Tom Conti, as Laurens Van
Der Post, who attempts to bridge the huge cultural
gaps between them all. Contis humanity carries
the film; Bowie and Sakomotos characters are
stylised, almost ritualistic both of them yearn to
be archetypes.
Oshima filmed extremely fast, with no rushes,
and Sakomoto would later comment that when he
saw his own performance, I couldnt believe how
bad my acting was I was traumatised. Bowies
portrayal of Jack Celliers the perfect soldier
who is attempting to atone for abandoning his

crippled brother is also variable, most notably

the faintly risible flashback to Celliers as a
seventeen-year-old
schoolboy.
Nonetheless,
Bowies physical beauty all jagged teeth and
exquisite cheekbones and ethereal air is perfect
for a character who, as his initials indicate, is a
Christ-like figure, human but other-worldly.
Flawed but meaningful, engagingly human,
Bowies performance would prove the high
watermark of his cinematic career.
In America, the movie titled Merry Christmas
Mr. Lawrence was a box-office failure; as
scriptwriter Paul Mayersberg explains, US
audiences were baffled by a prison camp movie
where nobody tried to escape and roles of this
calibre would ultimately dry up. But in Europe and
Japan, the movies themes of atonement, crosscultural incomprehension, homo-eroticism and a
search for meaning were more resonant and Merry
Christmas Mr. Lawrence acquired the reputation
of a classic. As Jeremy Thomas, who would go on
to produce films like The Last Emperor and Sexy
Beast, points out, It was my first film that caught

the public imagination and was shown all over the

world. And it has aged well, because it was set in
period and because Bowie somehow doesnt
look any older today than he did then.
The filming wrapped up with David presenting
an impromptu show which was rapturously
received by the crew. It marked an unexpectedly
intense year, for along with filming in Rarotonga
and New Zealand with Oshima, and London with
Tony Scott, hed also shuttled between Montreux
and New York, where friends like Anne Wehrer
and Esther Friedmann enlisted his help with Iggy,
who had returned penniless from Haiti that
summer, apparently under the influence of a
voodoo curse, still in what seemed like an
unstoppable downward spiral.
In the weeks when he wasnt working, David
started to base himself in New York, in parallel
with the impressive chteau-style house hed
recently bought in Upper Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sometimes hed venture out of his Midtown loft
with bodyguards one musician who had a
disagreement with him remembers being turfed out

of the room by two attractive women, like Bambi

and Thumper, Blofelds bodyguards in Diamonds
Are Forever but by the summer he felt
comfortable enough to hang out solo in musicians
haunts like the Continental, in Manhattan.
Occasionally this meant chatting politely to cokedout upstarts like Billy Idol presumably talking
about the old days in Bromley, where Billy had
grown up, too. Idol was a regular at the club, and
arrived around 5 a.m. one morning with a friend in
tow: Nile Rodgers, the founder, with Bernard
Edwards, of Chic. David and Nile talked till
dawn. Just a few days later, David asked Nile to
produce his next album.
In hindsight, Davids collaboration with Nile
Rodgers looked a sure-fire winner. At the time it
was anything but. Rodgers red-hot winning streak
with Chic, Sister Sledge and Diana Ross was now
a couple of years old, and since then his magic
touch had deserted him: Debbie Harrys Koo Koo
had not delivered one hit single while his own solo
album had also failed to set the charts alight. To

this day, I owe David for his commitment

because at the time I had five flops in a row, says
the celebrated producer. I mean it, five! It was
really tough for me.
Rodgers was probably the most experienced
producer David had ever teamed up with but the
way he worked with David was utterly unlike
anything hed done before, or since. Yet if their
collaboration was unique in Rodgers experience,
for David it marked the summit of a working
method hed established with Dek Fearnley, or
Mick Ronson, many years before, where he
delegated key tasks, giving his collaborators huge
freedom. On the album that would become Lets
Dance, his delegation was even more extreme,
with Rodgers responsible for recruiting key
musicians, as well as overseeing the finest details
of the arrangements. It was Nile Rodgers who
programmed the music. But it was David Bowie
who programmed Nile Rodgers.
The process began at Davids new house in
Lausanne, where they spent days getting to know
each other, before one morning David walked into

Niles room with a twelve-string guitar. Or what

had once been a twelve-string. It had just six
strings on it, which was weird. Why not use a sixstring guitar in the first place? says Rodgers. And
then he played me this song. And told me he
thought it was going to be a hit.
The song was folky; David played it vaguely in
the style of the Byrds, and it was called Lets
Dance. And I was like, Thats not happening
man. It totally threw me. And it was not a song
you could dance to. Rodgers simply didnt
understand. Was this some kind of mind game? So
he called a mutual friend in New York: Do you
think David is the kind of guy who would play a
trick on me? he asked. Is he playing me this song
he says is going to be a hit to see if Im some sort
of sycophant?
No, he wouldnt do that, came the reply. If he
says that, he really believes it. The information
didnt help. Oh shit! What do I do now? Nile
asked himself.
Rodgers kept schtum about such worries as his
discussions with David continued. For much of the

time theyd talk about fifties album sleeves,

flipping through Davids collection of vinyl
albums, some of them venerable originals that hed
bought twenty years before at Medhursts in
Bromley. They played records like Twist and
Shout, discussing the difference between The
Beatles sweat-drenched version and the Isley
Brothers original; they both fondled the film noir
sleeve of Henry Mancinis Peter Gunn and Nelson
Riddles Route 66 soundtracks, chatted about the
Chicago Art Ensemble and Lester Bowie, and they
spent a lot of time listening to and looking at
photos of Little Richard, the childhood hero whom
David still revered. It was like being inducted via
a series of visual and auditory mood-boards.
It was only later that Rodgers realised he was
being programmed: brainwashed, in a musical
version of The Manchurian Candidate. For many
of Bowies previous records, he had honed the art
of briefing musicians, getting them to pull
something out of their consciousness that they
hadnt known existed. Now he was doing it on a
bigger scale.

The simplest illustration of how this worked

comes on Lets Dance. Rodgers knew that if this
was to be a dance hit, it needed funking up; no
problem, this was his fort. But all his previous
hits had a memorable opening, too. The solution
came from Twist and Shout: Rodgers simply
lifted the vocal stacking effect the bit where The
Beatles sent teenagers crazy and put it at the
beginning of the song: Ah Ah Ah Ah!
After each line of the verse there was a space,
which required some kind of response. The
solution was Henry Mancinis Peter Gunn horn
riff dropped in directly after David sings the
words dance the blues. It was taken straight
from that record, a thing I never did before, says
Rodgers. That [riff] seemed to me so anti-groove,
but sticking it on something that was so hard
groove it was like, Shit! This is magic! And I
realised that all that fifties and sixties stuff was a
snapshot of Bowies brain. Then I was like,
Wow! You can do that!
Himself a master producer, used to vibing up
musicians to get the right take, Rodgers realised

that he too was being produced, but given absolute

freedom, in a way that no other musician had
attempted. When we did Lets Dance the preproduction was so clear. Ive never worked with
an artist like that before or since. It was all
beautiful images. We went to peoples houses that
he knew had certain things it was like fact
finders, treasure hunters, conquistadores looking
for gold and we were going and looking at
everything, in museums. Nile look at this picture.
Look at this! So he was like the worlds greatest
cook showing you, This is what we want it to be.
Once I had that I was clear as a bell. I was
unwavering.
The same process would apply with the other
standout songs on Lets Dance ; David played Nile
Iggys version of China Girl, again telling him it
was a hit, and he had to work out how to make it
one, adapting the opening riff from Rufuss Sweet
Thing to give it a Chinese feel. After their
extensive discussions, and pre-production at
Montreux, the sessions at New Yorks Power
Station were brief; the studio was booked for

twenty-one days, and, according to Rodgers, the

tracks were recorded and mixed by day seventeen.
There was only one artistic disagreement; Rodgers
was unimpressed by Bowies suggestion of Stevie
Ray Vaughan for most of the guitar solos, telling
him the guitarist just sounded like Albert King.
This guys different, David told him, hes got a
whole other thing going on.
Vaughan was recording his debut album at
Jackson Brownes studio using downtime over the
Thanksgiving holiday when he got the call. The
guitarist was intrigued by the offer. It was a
challenge and Steve was always confident about
being in the studio, says Stevies bassist, Tommy
Shannon. Vaughan showed up within a day or two,
and added his guitar parts instantaneously,
according to Nile. Vaughan played an old Fender
Strat, plugged straight into an old Fender amp all
the tone coming from the player, with no tricks.
The same applied to the rest of the music, for Lets
Dance was at heart a simple, minimal album, with
most of its impact coming not from electronic
effects, but from the intuitive musicianship of

players like Vaughan, and the consummately funky

Tony Thompson who would later be called in to
play drums with Madonna, Robert Palmer and
others, but would never surpass the effortless
swing of Lets Dance.

Over the following months, David Bowie was

often be seen in the corridors of EMI, cutting such
a refined, elegantly suited-and-booted figure that
on first glance the record company execs thought
he was a wealthy investor. Although he had
financial advisers, he negotiated the deal himself;
the story within EMI was that he persuaded the
aggressive new American arm of the company to
pay a huge advance purely on the basis of hearing
the backing tracks. The amount David secured for
his services on signing of his contact with EMI
America, on 27 January, 1983, was publicised as
just under $17 million.
You know how deals are constructed, says
Gary Gersh, the A&R who, with US chairman
Rupert Perry, signed Bowie to EMI. That figure
would depend on a lot of clauses. But it was a
superstar deal when maybe Davids sales so far
wouldnt warrant it. Many other EMI staff agreed
it was a huge risk, in the words of Davids A&R
man, Hugh Stanley Clarke; there was debate as to
whether EMI would ever make their money back.
Even at the time, Gersh agrees, all the company

management had their doubts. But today, he points

out, If you were to say to any record company
they could have that deal again you would have a
line of people around the block.

19
On the Other Side
I got the spider built and only saw the
first few shows. That was enough.
Chip Monck

It was spring in the northern hemisphere, but there

was a streak of autumnal gold to the light in Sydney
and Carinda, as David Bowie brandished a guitar
in the outback, or bared his backside as the surf
spilled over him and his China Girl. Back in
Manhattan, Carlos Alomar was assembling the
musicians for what would be the biggest world
tour of 1983. With a typically consummate grasp of
the priorities of the modern pop industry, David
was filming videos on the beach.
According to Nile Rodgers, David had been

happy to sit in the lounge at the Power Station

while many of Lets Dance s tracks were laid
down, but when it came to the video, David kept a
close eye on every aspect of David Malletts
production. Lets Dance was filmed in an
Australian outback village, a transplanted
Mississippi Delta. David mimed the song in a
shack, with two kids from the Aboriginal-Islanders
Dance Theatre acting out a storyline based on the
message, Bowie explained, that its wrong to be
racist! For China Girl, the song inspired by
Iggys affair with Kuelan Nguyen, Bowie and
Mallett cast a student and model, Geeling Ng, who
marched around Sydneys Chinatown in a
Chairman Mao outfit and re-enacted From Here to
Eternity on the beach, frolicking with David in the
surf. In this idyllic interlude, the two became
lovers, hanging out together in Davids apartment
in Elizabeth Bay.
*
Back in 1967, friends like Tony Visconti had
ridiculed Ken Pitts efforts to mould David as an
all-round entertainer. In 1983, the all-round

potential offered by the new medium of music

video was an intrinsic part of his pitch to EMI. The
British companys new American arm was
expanding fast, its success bolstered by Brit acts
who had been making videos to screen on Top of
the Pops for decades, and were cleaning up at the
newly dominant MTV.
The few American outfits who caught on
principally Michael Jackson, whose Billie Jean
video was screened on the lily-white network in
March 1983 would dominate the eighties, and as
Bowies video drove Lets Dance, his debut EMI
single, to his first simultaneous UK and US number
one, in May, the smart money was on him to
dominate this decade. In the seventies hed rebranded himself as the worlds first bisexual rock
star; now his niche brand was being relaunched as
an international multimedia product. His star status
was highlighted by a sensational appearance
alongside Nagima Oshima and Ryuichi Sakomoto
at the Cannes Festival in May to promote Merry
Christmas Mr. Lawrence : tanned, his hair a mass
of blond candyfloss, he joked casually with the

admiring press, switching effortlessly from selfdeprecation to intellectual earnestness. European

critics in particular loved the movie, a strong
contender for the Grand Prize although it was
ultimately pipped at the post by Monty Pythons
The Meaning of Life.
Far away from the glitz of Cannes, the
rehearsals for Davids biggest tour to date had
moved to Dallas, overseen by Carlos Alomar,
much like Davids 1978 tour. The musicians were
based around the Lets Dance crew, plus a threepiece horn section and Dave Lebolt (later a senior
figure at Apple Computer) on keyboards.
If there was a perfect way to do a modern tour,
this was it. Spanning sixteen countries, ninety-six
performances, and selling over two-anda-half
million tickets, the Serious Moonlight tour would
become the definitive stadium event. Every
decision in its progress was closely scrutinised by
a triumvirate of David (or an Isolar
representative), accountant Bill Zysblat and agent
Will Forte, each keeping a close eye on the
logistics, the money and each other. Its only rival

over the early eighties was the Stones 1981

Tattoo You tour, which grossed more in ticket
sales, but was confined to the USA and Europe.
The Stones outing was a reminder of past glories,
promoting a collection of tracks dating back a
decade. In contrast, Serious Moonlight captured
Bowie at his peak.
Guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan was, at first,
thrilled about the tour, and believed that hed
extracted a promise from David that his own band,
Double Trouble, would play support. Once
rehearsals shifted from Manhattan to Dallas,
Vaughans hometown, he started hanging out with
his band again. Only two or three nights in, theyd
have to sit and hear his complaints: There was a
point in the set where he was supposed to come
down this ramp doing these [dance] steps, says
bassist Tommy Shannon, and that just wasnt in
his nature. Hed been pushed into it anyway by
management. He was having a hard time adjusting.
Vaughan was, says Shannon, focused and hardworking over this spring, but the guitarist was
becoming increasingly isolated in the Bowie camp.

The suggestion that Double Trouble could support

was dropped. Then Vaughan saw the Lets Dance
video, which showed David, atop a mountain,
miming Stevies guitar solo on a Fender Strat.
Anyone used to the ways of showbiz would have
accepted such a harmless deception. For a Texas
bluesman, it was an outrage: The video showed
David faking it and Stevie was furious, says
Shannon. For Stevie, the videos, the staging and the
glitz were a distraction, a sign of fakery. Relations
soured quickly. Lenny Vaughan a pushy rock
wife, says Shannon interrupted rehearsals to
brandish a newspaper which showed Stevies
photo as a full page, David a mere single column.
Bowie, who remained unruffled for most of the
tour, was enraged. Dont you ever break up my
rehearsal! backing singer Frank Simms heard him
shout. If you were a man Id kick your ass. Lenny
was barred from rehearsals and then Vaughan, says
Simms, disappeared for five days without telling
anyone to attend the funeral of Muddy Waters.
Vaughans manager Chesley Milligan a good ol
boy who was in over his head demanded an extra

$500 per week for Stevie and a place on the plane

for himself or his client would walk. Stevie
walked.
David, who wasnt actually present, would later
describe Vaughan standing disconsolately by the
roadside as the band boarded their coach and left
town. But Stevie cheered up quickly, says
Shannon. He got in the car with us and said,
Well, Im not going. And he was really relieved.
When it comes down to it, Steve wanted to stay
with his band. Vaughan started his own ninetydate tour that June, racking up 500,000 sales of his
debut album by word of mouth. He and David
would never meet again, according to Shannon.
As one guitarist passed out of Davids orbit for
ever, another returned. Earl Slick had fallen out
with David after Station to Station, thanks to
disputes involving Michael Lippman, Pat Gibbons
and, says Slick, the fact my head was up my ass.
After calling Slick in for the last two days of
rehearsals, David did what he hadnt done last
time around and spoke to the guitarist face-to-face:
I showed up and David is going, Wheres the

Earl? says Slick. I said, Come on! He goes,

Alright! Which he wouldnt have done earlier
but we were both different then. So we went out
and had lunch and cleared the air because there
were a lot of bad feelings. So everything was
cool.
When Slick had joined the Diamond Dogs tour,
his induction had consisted of having his long hair
cropped, like Samson: he was livid, but realised
later it was part of a process of being taken out of
his comfort zone. For Serious Moonlight, Slick
had to endure a series of suit fittings, as clothes
designed for a lanky Texas cowboy were
shortened and taken in to fit his wiry Italian frame.
Then Slick sat one-one-on with Carlos and learned
the entire set over forty-eight hours, fuelled by
coffee after coffee, before setting out on a tour that
made his last venture with David seem like
amateur hour. David was totally on it the good
days, the bad days, it doesnt matter. There was a
lot to think about and that made it easy.
The tour opened in Brussels, and NME
journalist Charles Shaar Murray whod followed

Bowie since 1971 was flown over to the opening

show by Bowies management company, Isolar. In
a signpost to the changing times, hed been
commissioned to write the copy for the glossy tour
booklet. The huge production he saw was a
potent reminder of how the stakes had been raised
for live shows, and how theyd continue to rise
with Prince and Madonna but in Brussels and
London, says Murray, there was no hint of the
flabbiness with which eighties stadium tours later
became associated. When Tony Thompson nailed
a groove down, it stayed nailed down it was
right on the money. Alomar was playing rhythm,
and hed been in the pit at the Apollo, that was all
the credentials you needed.
For those earlier shows, Davids voice was
superb. In a moment of euphoria I described him
as the best white singer alive, says Murray.
Which I possibly overstated, but he was good
enough to be rated against the best. And Id give
him the highest marks for stage-craft, charisma and
the dancing, too.
All those involved in the tour felt they were

breaking new ground. There was a sense of the

magnitude from literally the first day I thought it
would be enormous, and it was, says Frank
Simms. It wasnt merely the size of the venues, or
the luxury of the hotels. Simms later played an
arena tour to 40,000-strong crowds with Billy
Joel: They would cheer and clap but it wasnt
the same magnitude, and didnt have the same
magic. With Serious Moonlight, in the larger
cities, youd have the biggest stars: in England the
royal family, in Thailand the King, Queen and
Prince, in Australia the Prime Minister, then in LA
youd have movie stars, Michael Jackson they
were all there.
For a couple of weeks, when Geeling Ng joined
the tour in France and Germany, there was a
blissful, easy happiness around the organisation.
The band loved her she was unaffected, calm,
normal as apple pie, says George Simms, who
double-dated David and Geeling with his wife. It
was sweet, as normal as can be, and we managed
to find some places where not too many fans would
bother us. George got the sense that Geeling was

overwhelmed by the experience and realised it

was just a short-term thing. After accompanying
David for a fortnight, she caught a plane back to
New Zealand and a normal life, just as David and
band flew over to San Bernadino to play a one-off
show at the US festival for the widely publicised
fee of $1 million.
Headlining on an evening that included U2, The
Pretenders and Stevie Nicks to a 300,000-strong
crowd, they walked out onto a stage that had been
completely cleared, at eleven oclock to a stunned,
rapturous reception: like Jesus walking on water,
says Simms. The festival was a disaster for its
sponsor, Apples Steve Wozniak; losing over $7
million according to the New York Times , with one
audience member murdered in a drug deal, another
dead of an overdose. But for David it was a
triumph; the date hugely raised his commercial
profile, and helped bring more US promoters on
board. But with stories of the $1-million price tag
came reports that David considered the tour his
pension plan a sentiment guaranteed to inflame
his detractors, who started to speculate that the

tour was more about money than music.

David, meanwhile, dealt with the constant buzz of
attention and adrenalin calmly and efficiently. He
had his little strategies to retain a degree of
normality: often, hed hang with the Simms
brothers, enjoying their humorous skits. He had the
gift of instantly flipping from such japes, to coming
over all regal and refined if, say, Susan Sarandon
was in town. He was a good boy throughout;
occasionally hed have the odd social toot of
cocaine, but generally showed exemplary selfcontrol. During the eight-month tour, he went on the
rampage just once, in London, during a party in
Frank Simms room. There was a glint to his
expression, and the sense hed had a couple of
drinks too many, before he hit on one of the girls.
Then hed leave the room with her and come back
fifteen or twenty minutes later and hit on another
girl. And then it would happen again. And this
went on several times. Finally, one of the partygoers turned him down, complaining to Simms,
How dare he? Who does he think he is? But this

was an out-of-character lapse in a very light tour,

as far as drugs and other behaviour. He knew his
limits, says Simms, he was under a superior
degree of control.
The dizzy heights to which Davids fortunes had
risen were in stark contrast to his friend Iggy, who
over the same period was touring himself into
oblivion. By the spring of 1983, he had lawyers
pursuing him after an incident when hed stamped
on a girls head at a gig in Poughkeepsie. Though
this period was worse than his humiliation with
The Stooges for the music was lousy, too hed
stayed in touch with David. On 20 June, he met fan
and future wife Suchi Asano, whod gone back to
retrieve her umbrella after his show in Tokyo;
exactly one week later, China Girl hit number
two in the UK, promising him the royalties that had
eluded him for so long. Iggy abandoned his tour
and flew back with Suchi to LA, where they met up
with David when the tour reached the Forum on 14
August.
It was a poignant example of how lives can turn

around. Iggy or rather Jimmy, his avuncular alterego was all sparkly-eyed and boyish, with a
side-parting that made him look like Bing Crosby.
Healthy and, soon, drug-free, he was teaching
English to Suchi, which seemed to calm him down.
They made a sweet couple. With David and
George Simms, they sat around reminiscing about
Berlin, before David started enthusing about life in
Lausanne: he explained the Swiss legal system, the
government, the culture and the citizen militia, as
Jimmy nodded attentively. Then David described
the twenty-four-seat jet in which they were flying,
mapping out its lounge area and seating
arrangements on a carpet with the same excitement
he might have shared over a Heckel painting, seven
years before. David suggested they join the tour,
which would soon be heading out to the Far East.
Ive got too much to sort out right now, Jimmy
told him, before they agreed to meet up in
December. Davids other celebrity visitor at the
Forum was Michael Jackson; the two chatted
together, so quietly that bystanders could not make
out the conversation.

Three weeks later, on 3 September, another old

friend showed up. Since Mick Ronsons short,
disastrous solo career under the auspices of
MainMain, he had retreated to his comfort zone,
contributing his tasteful guitar to work by Ian
Hunter and Bob Dylan, and building up a solid,
unflashy reputation as a producer, most recently for
A&M Canada. Mick arrived at Davids hotel with
Canadian singer Lisa Dalbello, whose career he
was helping relaunch; David asked him to return
the next night and play. Dalbello remembers
Ronson being OK, whatever about the prospect,
but the guitarist returned the next night and met the
band. He was kind of drunk, and I think he was
intimidated, says Frank Simms. Ronson walked on
stage after the encore with Earl Slicks blue
Stratocaster to a tumultuous welcome: the band
launched into a rocking version of The Jean
Genie at one point the strap slipped off Earls
blue guitar and Ronson waved it around his head:
I thought, Thats not necessary! But he was
nervous, says Simms, who was standing nearby.
The Japanese and Australian legs of the tour,

over October and November, were again huge

events, unrivalled as spectacles until Michael
Jacksons Bad tour in 1987, and the Stones Steel
Wheels in 1989. But by the time they hit the Far
East, a sense of being divorced from reality had
overtaken all the participants. The tour helped kick
off the eighties obsession with size and statistics,
but the sheer scale and repetitive drudgery meant
that, for David more than anyone, the experience
would become routine. Charles Shaar Murray
recalls, I saw the footage of Bowie in Singapore.
And I suddenly thought, Hes turned into a rock n
roll version of Prince Charles. In a suit, with an
old-fashioned haircut like a lemon meringue on his
head, talking in this posh accent, and its very,
Oh, what do you do?
For the band the unending spectacle was
numbing. Night after night, you start to lose touch,
says Frank Simms. By the time we got to Australia
we would have these tremendous parties every
single night actresses and models, buffets and
drinking, then a yacht, with its own caterer. I
would go for two weeks without calling home. My

wife said, I wish youd call, you may be having

fun but we miss you. I would apologise and say,
You have no idea its like theyre feeding you
the sun, the moon, and the stars. I dont know how
David lived with it.
The closing night of the tour, in Hong Kong, was
John Lennons birthday, 8 December. During the
show, David sat down at one point, talking about
John, almost as if in prayer or meditation. And then
David and band walked backstage, as if in a daze,
hugging each other gently, before the final encore.
So we ended on this very sombre note, says
Frank Simms. We memorialised Lennon, and we
memorialised the fact we had been together for this
wonderful experience.
Most of the band went home, feeling subdued.
David and Coco who, as ever, was there to keep
him company once his love affairs fizzled out
stayed out in the Far East, meeting up with Iggy and
Suchi before disappearing for an extended holiday
in Bali and Java. The sights they witnessed,
notably the ostentatious villas of oil magnates,
each with its own open drain carrying a stream of

sewage down the hill into the jungle, would be

documented in Iggys lyrics to Tumble and
Twirl, one of the few new songs recorded for
Davids next album, which he started recording in
Marin Heights, Canada, just a few months later, in
May, 1984.
By May of 1984, David Bowie had made fifteen
studio albums; each had been conceived in a burst
of creativity and ideas, usually accompanied by a
manifesto that was floated around the press, or
previewed live. Even Lets Dance , for which new
songs had been at a premium, was born out of a
love for R&B and a yearning to evoke the spirit of
Little Richard. Little Richard had scored hit
records without compromising himself, without
losing his status as an outsider. David thought hed
finally managed the same feat.
In the old days, he had advised his friend Glenn
Hughes, When everyone turns right, turn left!
Now he himself turned right, without noticing.
A year or so later, David would compare the
concept behind album number sixteen, Tonight, to

Pin Ups. He was referring to the albums emphasis

on cover versions, but the comparison was also apt
in that the main inspiration for Pin Ups was to
keep a commercial rollercoaster moving. Last time
around, of course, it was Tony Defries who was
intent on relieving the fans of their cash; in 1984, it
was David.
This wasnt the only change in Davids
philosophy. Just a few years earlier, he had told
pianist Sean Mayes he was suspicious of
virtuosos. Now, following the example of Lets
Dance, he surrounded himself with them. Davids
key assistant for Tonight was Derek Bramble,
previously bassist with Heatwave briefly the
UKs most successful home-grown funk band and
recently famous once more thanks to keyboard
player Rod Temperton, whod crossed the Atlantic
to huge success as principal songwriter on Michael
J a c ks o ns Thriller. Perhaps David thought
Bramble would graduate to similar fame; he also
valued the fact that Bramble could play proper
reggae bass lines.
Davids venture into reggae would prove the

most bizarre of his stylistic about-turns. Hed

fallen for The Velvets before theyd had a record
out, and Neu! when they were hardly known
outside Germany; now he was experimenting with
white reggae just as the smart money notably The
Police was moving out.
The location for the recording of Tonight was
suggested by Hugh Padgham, best-known as
producer of The Police (and more recently
McFly); he was the man who inspired the simple,
yearning piano part on Every Breath You Take,
which was recorded at Le Studio in Morin
Heights, a skiing resort north-west of Montreal.
Padgham suggested using the same studio, and
volunteered to step down to an engineering role
because he wanted to work with Bowie. Well
aware of the restless creativity that Bowie had
summoned up for a decade or more, Padgham was
taken aback to find that the singer seemed simply
bored once sessions started. There were similar
recollections from some of the studio staff, who
remembered he was obsessed with the I Ching,
one of them asserting he even used it to determine

if a mix was done. The only traditional aspect of

his recording behaviour that seemed to have
survived from the old days was the pursuit of sex;
and that old energy only seemed to return when he
was trailing women on the dancefloor of the
nearby club.
Padghams role as engineer grew to that of
producer as the sessions dragged on. He
remembers some experimentation in the early
stages of the album, but that in general David only
betrayed excitement when he talked about his
friend Iggy, who was at the sessions. David was
talking about how hed rescued Iggy. And I
remember him telling lots of stories about him, like
how they cut short his tour after Iggy had stamped
on a girls head and made her bite off her tongue.
Padgham was at a loss to know the intentions
behind Tonight; the most charitable explanation is
that it was designed to make some money for his
friend, for the albums nine tracks featured four
Iggy credits, although the sole new song, Tumble
and Twirl, was a confused assemblage, far from
the glories of Lust for Life. But then, Tonight, the

song Iggy and David had written for Lust for Life,
was hardly recognisable, too; cut in a sanitised
reggae style, with pristine drums and a warbling
competition between David and guest star Tina
Turner, both of them struggling to out-emote the
other. The originals thrilling, shouted intro I
saw my baby, she was turning blue with its
reference to a heroin overdose, was Bowdlerised:
I didnt want to inflict it on her David
explained to Charles Shaar Murray when it came
time to promote the album. Its not necessarily
something that she would agree to be part of.
There is something sad, or deluded, as he sits in
the Savoy with Murray, attempting to justify why
he has emasculated a song he wrote just six years
before; suddenly he sounds as if age or mainstream
success has drained his ambition and his hearing,
for at one point he claims that the syruppy, phonedin version of Tonight still has that same barren
feeling. Most strikingly, the confidence and
intensity of his normal conversation has ebbed
away. In the old days, his music was always
presented with a manifesto; now he utters tentative

generalisations such as, The interesting thing

about rock is that you never think that its going to
go on for much longer. Then you find that it has.
Just two years before, when he was acting in The
Elephant Man, he had been filled with a sense of
mission; now, theres a subdued, depressive
undertone when he discusses his impact on society
in the seventies, then tells Charlie Murray, I dont
think I would ever contribute so aggressively
again.
In later years David would blame the recording,
pleading that the album had great material that got
simmered down to product level. Yet more
fundamental was Davids refusal to choose
collaborators who would challenge or inspire him
and the loss of the key driver of his career to date
his appetite for risk, what his next collaborator,
Julien Temple, describes as the appreciation of
the randomness of things. Its a great artistic
strength, if youre bold enough to follow it.
As far as Tonight was concerned, Bowies sense
of risk, of the random, had ebbed away. Yet when

it came to a new medium, the music video, David

was energised, fired up that there was still much to
learn. After seeing the work of Julien Temple
whom hed searched out at a preview screening of
the directors Sex Pistols documentary The Great
Rock n Roll Swindle back in 1980 Bowie had
done as consummate a job of charming and
enthusing the director as he had with Nile Rodgers
on Lets Dance. He opened up to him, talked about
his philosophy: There is a real side of him which
isnt confident. And then there is the dazzling
super-star, says the director. He can be quite a
normal guy at times, with this amazing ability to
transform into a glittering star. The charisma is not
always there.
It was this nervous, self-critical Bowie, the
nerdy fan persona that he displayed to Temple,
who would be immortalised in the video Jazzin
for Blue Jean. Temple had played with the idea of
two personae on some of his previous long-form
videos, but David took the self-mockery further,
splitting David Jones/Bowie into two characters.
In the twenty-one-minute film, Bowie plays the

geeky Vic an artless cockney with an incessant,

hopeless sales patter who is attempting to
impress the glacial Eve Ferret by taking her to
meet rock star Screaming Lord Byron, Davids
other persona a New Romantic concoction of
silk and slap, haughty and unreachable, but
helpless and isolated behind his painted sneer.
Vics efforts come to naught, and when Eve Ferret
disappears with Screaming Lord Byron at the end
of the evening, Vic shouts out an accusation that
ran hilariously true: You conniving, randy, bogus,
Oriental old queen! Your record sleeves are better
than your songs!
The shoot was intense, running seriously behind
schedule; finally, dawn broke and they ran out of
night for the final shots. As the sun comes up,
David steps out of his Vic character, and
complains to Julien about the ending in what
Screaming Lord Bowie would describe as a
Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt played for laughs.
It was when he worked up a new ending that I
realised how good he was at responding to crises,
says Temple, and making spur of the moment

decisions.
The video would be regarded as a triumph, and
its energy and sense of fun helped damp down the
critical backlash to Tonight, which started out with
promising sales, entered the UK charts at number
one, and was certified platinum by the end of
November. But by the spring, when it came time to
record a video for the albums only other halfdecent track, Loving the Alien, the zest hed
managed to summon up for his videos, if not his
music, seemed to have dissipated, too.
Possessed of more self-awareness than most of
his peers, Bowie would also be more acutely
conscious of his failures. From the 1960s he had
made a habit of reading all his own reviews, and
cultivating writers and critics, but by the mideighties, he would exist in a bizarrely bipolar
world working mostly with unfailingly approving
acolytes as he made his music, and then falling
victim to the finely honed knives of critics once the
music was unleashed. It was tough for a man
whod always been a critics favourite to realise
that, once hed joined the mainstream with Lets

Dance and Tonight, he was distinctly out of

favour: the mainstream, the commercial, The
Dame.
Bowies nickname reflected some of the
cynicism that was unleashed by his unashamed
grab for mainstream success. Yet the attention
David received from critics paled into
insignificance compared to the onslaught of the
tabloid press in the wake of a family tragedy.
Davids half-brother Terry had remained at Cane
Hill for long periods since David had last visited
him, during filming for The Hunger. Since that
time his isolation and depression had deepened
until, on 27 December, 1984, he decided to end his
life. Walking down to the local train station,
Coulsdon South, he lay down on the rails, waiting
for a train to approach before apparently changing
his mind at the last moment. On 16 January, he took
advantage of Cane Hills shortage of staff, returned
to the station, and once again placed his head on
the rails. This time he did not lose his nerve.
Whatever anguish David felt, We probably

cant imagine, says his Beckenham friend, Mark

Pritchett. But the family traumas reached a new
intensity when Davids aunt Pat, angry at both
Peggy and David for not visiting Terry often
enough, shared her anger with the Daily Mirror
and then the Sun. I hope God forgives you, David,
for this tragic rejection, she told the newspaper.
David turned his back on his brother when it
would have been so easy for him to do so much.
David cheered him up and promised to see him
again, after a time. But he never did. This has
caused a big rift in our family.
Bowie decided not to attend the funeral, which
became the culmination of a tabloid feeding frenzy.
The note on Davids bouquet, echoing Rutger
Hauers final soliloquy in Bladerunner, read:
Youve seen more things than we can imagine, but
all these moments will be lost like tears washed
away by the rain. God bless you David.
The newspapers condemned him for not
attending the funeral, too. Later, Pat would expand
on her grievances via two Sunday Times reporters,
Peter and Leni Gillman. The couples biography of

David, published the next year, would open with a

graphic account of the family mental instability,
catalogued mostly by Pat, and would close with
Terrys suicide. In between, their gripping account
which rarely mentioned Davids music except
where it related to schizophrenia, gay sex, or the
Burns family history set out a portrait of an
uncaring, manipulative monster. Some of Davids
confidants notably Tony Visconti, whom David
had last seen during the Serious Moonlight tour
spoke to the Gillmans for the book, and were hence
judged accomplices in this assault on his privacy.
Bowie would not speak to Tony for another
fourteen years.
According to Ken Pitt, Davids aunt Pat would
come to bitterly regret her attack on David in the
wake of Terrys death. She was never the same. It
had a big effect on the whole family. It was very,
very sad.
Numbed by this family tragedy, seeking to
escape the tabloid press, David stayed holed up in
Switzerland for most of the spring of 1985. Around
May, Julien Temple had a crew ready for a video

shoot for Loving the Alien. Bowie, the reliable

showbiz trouper, did not turn up. When they finally
met up there was no haughtiness or grand excuses:
David told him he simply couldnt do it. He was
very down. He was open about how he felt, about
not feeling vibed up to be able to do the video.
If David was in a mental tailspin, it would be
fevered activity that pulled him out of it. By June,
Temple had finally managed to obtain backing for
Absolute Beginners, his film based on Colin
MacInnesss 1958 novel. Temple pursued Bowie
subtly for the role, but David proved an easy sell,
enthused by the role of ad exec Vendice Partners.
His characters name was a reference to Vance
Packard, author of The Hidden Persuaders, the
definitive fifties work on media manipulation in
fact, the movie encapsulated most of Bowies
obsessions, including the fifties, the birth of the
youth culture that had liberated him, the notion of
being British, rather than American, and also the
advent of modern marketing, the branding that
David understood so intuitively. David was

hugely into this, the simultaneous birth of the

teenager, and the creation of a market, says
Temple. And like everything he does, there was
total commitment. Bowie learned to tap-dance for
his main scene, which involved him frolicking
round a huge typewriter, climbing an admans
phoney Everest, all set to his advertising anthem
Thats Motivation.
It was when he had committed the first song to
tape that he told Temple hed come up with a
second. Hed written Thats Motivation, which
we needed. And he surprised me with Absolute
Beginners. He was surprised by it as well it just
kind of arrived.
Absolute Beginners was Bowies last great
composition of the 1980s. Like his perfect songs of
the early seventies, it arrived almost
instantaneously. The song was an afterthought at an
Abbey Road session arranged to demo Thats
Motivation; short of a band, David had called up
an A&R at EMI, Hugh Stanley Clarke, for
suggestions. Clarkes nominees, including guitarist
Kevin Armstrong, bassist Matthew Seligman and

Attractions organist Steve Nieve, were instructed

to turn up at Abbey Road for a session with a Mr
X.
The musicians had guessed Mr Xs identity
before the session started; they were all nervous,
eager to please, and the sense of unreality was
intensified by Davids flirtatious affability. Kevin
Armstrong would go on to work with Bowie for
years, but this first session nearly ended in
disaster. The only time I ever was with David
Bowie that I saw him do anything with drugs was
at that very first day. I dont know why he picked
me, but he asked me to get him some coke halfway
through the day. I rang a friend to see if he had any
going he rang me back an hour later to say hed
managed to find someone who helped him out:
You will never guess who Ive got this coke
from? Angie Bowie! And I said, Youll never
guess who its for David Bowie!
A more experienced operator might have been
more circumspect, but assuming his new boss
would be amused, Armstrong told him, My mate
is getting this coke from Angie! Bowies

unruffled, cheery demeanour cracked. No, not that

fucking witch! I hope she doesnt know who its
for?
No, no, I never told my friend, lied Armstrong.
Which was not true of course, he says today. So
I nearly had my marching orders there and then.
We went on to work together for ten years so its
probably all right. And I never came across any
reference to drugs from him ever again.
In fact, David Bowie after a large toot of
cocaine was not noticeably different to the Bowie
Armstrong would get to know later. He was on
sixty to eighty fags a day. Hed have a coffee
machine and some Cuba Gold coffee delivered
wherever he was and it would be constantly on the
brew. Seriously, hed be chucking down the coffee
and fags and it would always be pretty neurotic
and manic around him. Also, it was my first
experience of being in the orbit of someone so
hugely famous theres a kind of electrical crackle
around them anyway.
Fired up, Armstrong and the band laid down a
demo of Thats Motivation, and were left with an

hour of studio time. David played Armstrong some

chords and a few lines of a new song, listened
attentively as Armstrong helped sketch out the
arrangement, then they explained the song to the
band eight bars at a time, recording each section
piece by piece. By not knowing the whole song, it
totally forced you out of your comfort zone, says
bassist Matthew Seligman. It was an amazing
technique, very art school. In the opening bars
Seligman was overcome by a joyous, Velvet
Underground, Sunday Morning kind of feeling,
and played an ebullient, melodic bass riff It was
the sound of me being happy. He expected Bowie
to comment that it was too intrusive; instead, it
became an integral part of the intro. At one point in
the session he arbitrarily changed key; Bowie
changed key with him. It was almost telepathic: It
felt like mind control it was very powerful, this
switched-on radar.
The lyrics for Absolute Beginners revolved
around absolutely a buzz-word for the movie
crew: It just seemed to be a word that everyone
used a lot that year, says Temple, maybe because

Absolut vodka came out at that time and David just

picked up on it. Among the simplest of Bowie
lyrics ever committed to tape, the words were
scribbled down and recorded in chunks. He got an
idea, and followed it without thinking too much,
says Armstrong. When they finished the demo,
David was exuberant, thanking the musicians, as if
theyd done him a huge favour. I feel like I felt
when I finished Heroes, he told them.
Temple was blown away by the demo. When
the official version was recorded, only one extra
touch was needed. Bowie said, I want a duet with
a girl who sounds like a shop girl. Armstrong
piped up with the news that his sister worked at
Dorothy Perkins; the twenty-two-year-old Janet
Armstrong duly turned up at West Side for her first
ever professional vocal session, which also
happened to be David Bowies last Top 5 single,
when released in March 1986. A conventional but
fabulous song, it offered a tantalising promise that
Tonights creative block was only temporary.
Soon after the Absolute Beginners demo, David

called Armstrong. Im doing a concert for Bob

Geldof for charity. Its going to be a big deal. Do
you want to help me out? Armstrong agreed, as
David continued, Ive got this extra idea for a
record to support it. Would you meet me at this
film company in Soho at 10 oclock and bring an
acoustic?
Armstrong arrived in Wardour Street at the
appointed time. When David walked in, he was
accompanied by Mick Jagger. The pair explained
that they had planned a transatlantic duet for the
upcoming concert but the delay caused by the
satellite link made it impossible, so theyd decided
to pre-record and video their number, a cover of
Martha and the Vandellas Dancing in the Street.
When the band convened at Westside, they
enjoyed a fascinating glimpse of Britains two
best-known rock singers at work. Bowie arrived
first, with a copy of Springsteens Born in the
USA and told the rhythm section to match that
feel. Then Seligman and drummer Neil Conti felt a
whirling dervish presence behind them, as Jagger
whisked in, with his fourteen-year-old daughter

Jade in tow. Once the backing track was nailed, the

ten or so people present watched the pair camping
it up and competing as they recorded their
ludicrously over-the-top vocals. The two old
friends got on well, but their rivalry was obvious.
My gut reaction was to feel a bit protective of
David, says Seligman. Mick was much more
vocal, mouthy more rockist. David was the
smiling indulgent one, more good-natured about the
whole thing.
The big deal charity show would of course
turn out to be Live Aid, an infinitely bigger deal
than anyone could have imagined; the event brought
out a new, non-competitive side of David. It was
the first time hed worked with a younger band,
now featuring keyboard player Thomas Dolby, and
before the Wembley concert he bustled around like
a mother hen, despite the fact he was busy filming
at Elstree for another new project, the movie
Labyrinth. Hearing that his sax player, Clare Hirst,
had confessed to her local paper that she was
nervous about the show, he phoned her up and
reassured her. Then he sweetly requested if the

band could all wear turquoise for the performance

and asked Hirst if it would be OK if he grabbed
her hand during Heroes.
On the day, David was very up it hit home, as
it did for everyone what a great event this was,
says Armstrong. David showed them the waistband
of the Young Americans suit he was wearing,
sharing his delight that, at nearly forty, he could
still fit into it. The band drove by Stansfield Road
on the way a couple of them had lived in a squat
there and noticed the streets of Brixton were
quiet, all the residents glued to their TVs. As he
squeezed into Noel Edmonds helicopter, Davids
hands were shaking, cigarettes constantly on the go
the pilots complained the smoke was obscuring
the instrument panel. Otherwise, there was no sign
of nerves.
Queen, according to posterity, stole the show,
but on the day no one knew or cared. David had
chosen one of the youngest, most under-rehearsed
bands of his entire career and treated them as if
they were doing him a favour, joshing them along,
especially Seligman, whom David had nicknamed

Brenda in revenge for the bassist mentioning that

Blue Jean was boring. Before they hit the stage,
the band heard him shout, Remember, no monitors
for Brenda!
There were flurries of nerves: David fluffed a
line, introducing singer Tessa Niles as Theresa;
sax player Clare Hirst stood holding her hand out
at the scheduled moment, like a lemon, as David
danced around on the other end of the stage; Kevin
Armstrong started Rebel Rebel way too fast. Yet
throughout, Davids joy was infectious, pushing
forward the band who were totally focused on
remembering the songs theyd rehearsed exactly
three times. Somehow, it was perfect, says Thomas
Dolby. To my astonishment, I felt like I was on a
magic carpet ride. These songs were like our
teenage anthems my fingers were just wafted
along.
Of every artist, Bowie was the most focused on
pushing the cause, not himself, cutting short his set
which up till the penultimate rehearsal included
Fascination to save time for a harrowing video
of starving Ethiopian children, which raised

donations to a new peak.

His fulsome tribute to the band Ill be for
ever in their debt was repeated off-stage after
the performance, when they all hugged, overcome
with emotion. Later he dropped in on the Royal
Box, and cheekily asked Princess Diana, Will we
be getting you up on stage for the grand finale?
The spontaneity of Live Aid would help Davids
reputation more or less recover the momentum
hed lost with Tonight, but rather than attend to his
own career, he spent much of that winter working
with the man whod become his best friend. Since
setting up home with Suchi in New York, Iggy had
demoed his own songs with ex-Pistol Steve Jones,
anxious to self-start his own project. By October
1985, the pair had made an impressive set of
demos; when Iggy tracked David down to send him
the tapes, he was surprised to find David was
making the kids movie, Labyrinth, at Elstree.
(Lambasted by critics, the film would eventually
win Bowie a new generation of fans, rather like
Ringos efforts on Thomas the Tank Engine.)

Practical as ever, David told Iggy, Theyre all

midtempo, so youll need some slow ones and
some fast ones. He volunteered to fill the gaps if
Iggy and Suchi would join him and Coco on a
working holiday into the New Year.
They spent some of their three-month jaunt on
Mustique, where David had bought a holiday
home, installing a small recording setup. Joey, now
fifteen, came too; David was notoriously strict,
demanding his son return home while the other rich
kids stayed out partying. The other kids all made
fun of Joey, because he had to be home at 10
oclock, says one friend. [David] was very strict
but it worked for Joey. And of course a lot of
those other kids ended up as cokeheads or junkies.
After Mustique, there was skiing in Gstaad and
an agreement to complete the album later in the
spring. Meanwhile, David worked on promoting
Absolute Beginners, which was released on 4
April, 1986. The film had been hatched with a
media onslaught which helped attract the backing
of UK production company Goldcrest, but
ultimately brought a huge critical backlash.

Temples labour of love was vilified, becoming a

celebrated box-office flop. As Temples problems
multiplied, Bowie was genuinely supportive. A
lot of the problems we had brought on ourselves,
[but] Id invested a huge amount, psychically, in
that movie. And he understood.
A few weeks later, David was back helping Iggy
recover from his own legacy of failure. Aided by
Erdal Kizilcay, a local multi-instrumentalist whod
worked on the Lets Dance pre-production, they
recorded Iggys album in two weeks, starting at 10
oclock each morning, Bowie, once more the
punctual professional, scheduling each overdub
with his clipboard. The albums standout song was
Shades, with both words and music written by
David, after hed seen Iggy give Suchi a pair of
sunglasses: He saw that situation and turned it
around made it one of those reformed-guy
songs, says Iggy. David was in the middle of a
creative drought; now he gave what was, after
Absolute Beginners, his best song of the late
eighties to his friend. Kevin Armstrong arrived a
few days in to add his guitar. Watching the pair

together, he saw Bowies behaviour as essentially

selfless: I think he was genuinely saying, Iggy
needs help here, and Im the guy that can do it; Ive
done it before and Ill do it again.
When the album was complete, David had his
management company, Isolar, secure a deal with
A&M. Nancy Jeffries, the A&R woman who
signed the deal, remembers there was a hefty price
tag attached, so that David could recover his costs.
But having worked for RCA, she knew the value of
the album. It was almost like the David Bowie
record that you wished youd had, but never got.
Blah Blah Blah, released in November 1986,
would deliver Iggys first ever Top 50 hit, and
launch him on the road to something resembling a
conventional career.
Iggy wasnt the only hero that David tried to
champion over 1986. In June, he holed up in
Londons Edgware Road with his old manager,
Leslie Conn, for a couple of days. After talking
about Georgie Fame whom Leslie had worked
with, and David had imitated in the early sixties
they decided to resuscitate his career. David drew

up a memo, offering to invest 100,000 in Georgie

Fame, as part of a stable of artists to be produced
by David, Bill Laswell and Clive Langer.
The plan of building up a production stable,
building on Bowies hugely successful but
strangely underrated role as a producer, was an
intriguing one. Hed produced career highlights for
Iggy, Lou and Mott The Hoople, yet his production
skills were rarely discussed under-appreciated,
almost. Where many producers worked on
developing a trademark sound, his approach had
always been psychological; vibing up musicians,
easing the flow of ideas. Yet Bowies move into
mainstream production was to remain an intriguing
mightve-been, for by the autumn of 1986, hed
abandoned the idea and devoted himself to his own
career. Outwardly, he remained unconcerned by
the state of his reputation, but in private hed
mention that he was worried about his relationship
with EMI. When he started his next recording
project, he told his main collaborator, Erdal
Kizilcay, lets keep it simple, like the Iggy
album. They didnt.

Recorded at Mountain and completed at New

Yorks Record Plant, Never Let Me Down was
neither as good nor as bad as Tonight. In his
efforts to ensure the album was a hit, David
worked out each song carefully with Erdal
Kizilcay beforehand, thus excising any hint of the
random. It featured no cod-reggae, nor any songs
that, while derivative of his own work, were
memorable, like Loving the Alien had been.
Instead, the album was filled to the brim with
conventional music, lyrics and sounds. Never Let
Me Down was startlingly reminiscent of the
opening section of John Lennons Starting Over;
the same breathy counter-tenor delivery,
confessional feel and a similar chord sequence.
Glass Spider was preposterous, and hence at
least noticeable. The utter dearth of inspiration
was epitomised by the sole cover version: Iggys
Bang Bang. The original had been an act of
desperation on Iggys part when hed been told by
Arista to deliver a hit or leave the label. Davids
rendition of the plodding, predictable chord
sequence and coke-addled lyrics represents the

very nadir.
The reviews, when they came, were dreadful.
That was not the main problem, for plenty of
Bowies contemporaries had made poor albums.
More serious was the way that this album seemed
to damn all his previous work by association. As
Rolling Stones Steve Pond commented, [Bowie]
has reached a startling level of influence and status
while making few genuinely groundbreaking
records.
The subsequent Glass Spider tour, based on the
albums silliest track, would become notorious, a
celebrated disaster in David Bowies career. Such
is the distaste in which it is held, that its one
transcendent moment has been forgotten. It took
place on the Platz Der Republik, Berlin, just north
of Hansa Tonstudio 2, on 6 June, 1987.
David had dropped in to see his friend Edu
Meyer, who was working on a session with
Davids band, two days before. He was still the
same guy I remember from Lust for Life, still a
worker. The city was already filling with West
Germans whod made their way out to the isolated

enclave of Berlin for the show: A big event for

the whole country, says Meyer, and the [East
German] government was pretty upset that it was
happening so close to the Wall.
That night, David launched into Heroes in the
shade of the Wall, five minutes from where the
song had been conceived, and realised the song
was being redefined. As we got into it, we could
hear the thousands of kids who had gathered on the
other side, the Berlin side, he says, all joining in
[the song]. It was terribly emotional. He let them
do the singing, says Edu Meyer, and the DDR
government tried to get these people away from the
Wall but with no success. Fifteen years later,
when David played in Berlin, he suddenly became
aware that many of the audience had been the
voices hed heard: the ones on the other side.
It was one of the few happy moments on the tour.
Previously, David had always chosen his key
collaborators then left everything to them. Now, he
was becoming a control freak, fussing over every
detail, always very very tense, says bassist Erdal
Kizilcay. After the third date, Chip Monck, stage

designer for The Rolling Stones, whod been

commissioned to build the huge glass spider prop
that loomed over the stage, left the tour: I got the
thing built and only saw the first few shows. That
was enough.
The contempt in which Glass Spider was held is
often seen as being the product of hindsight, part of
a reaction against the obese over-production of the
late eighties; indeed, the tour was, according to
press reports, the most successful of Bowies
career, out-grossing Serious Moonlight, with 3
million tickets sold over its eighty-six shows. But
for the Bowie fans whod seen his previous tours,
the memory of the Glass Spider shows is still
traumatic. Tony Horkins, then editor of
International Musician magazine, was one of
many who walked into Wembley Stadium and
caught sight of the spider looming over the stage.
It wasnt just that they were obviously trying too
hard; it was that they hadnt spent the money to hit
what they were aiming for. The spider looked
pathetic.
David was simply dwarfed by the ludicrous

spectacle. Serious Moonlight had been a big

production but it was about him, and his voice
sounded great, says Horkins. This looked like an
am-dram production, very overblown, detached,
and he was dwarfed by all these gimmicks. It
didnt have any real soul. The emptiness on
display was embodied by the endless guitar
masturbation contests between Carlos Alomar and
Davids old Bromley Tech friend, Peter Frampton,
both competing to see who could play more notes
in a second. Their juxtaposition of guitar gurning
and drum machine-beats, lifted from Eddie Van
Halens work on Thriller, was five years out of
date. The impression that this was an emotionally
empty exercise in generating cash deepened with
the announcement that Bowies huge earnings were
being further bloated by a Pepsi sponsorship deal;
it was headlined by a predictably naff commercial
in which David was joined by Tina Turner, with
the duo camping around by a vending machine,
yelping, puts my choice in my hand, to the tune of
Modern Love.
The empty virtuosity on display in London was a

stark contrast to Davids joyous Wembley show of

just two years before. By the time the tour reached
America, Erdal and Frampton were fed up. We
just wanted to go home, says Kizilcay. On several
shows, Davids voice gave out and Carlos had to
step in. The energy with which David normally
inspired his crew was gone instead, he started
blaming them for the poor reviews. When the tour
finished in New Zealand, they torched the glass
spider. We just put the thing in a field and set light
to it. That was such a relief! David acknowledged
a couple of years later. In PR terms, the glass
spider was a far bigger disaster than a Nazi salute.
Some versions of history cite Glass Spider as
the beginning of a new high-tech touring vogue; in
fact, Michael Jacksons hugely successful Bad tour
of 1988 featured stripped-down staging, as did
Princes acclaimed Sign o the Times tour of
1987. In the previous four years both young artists,
as well as Madonna, had adopted Davids fleet-offoot style and made him look moribund and tired.
Yet, as ever, even the footnotes or failures in
David Bowies career would lodge in other

musicians consciousness. Over 2009 and 2010,

U2 would tour their underwhelming No Line on
the Horizon album, produced by Brian Eno.
Hovering above the stage, in what was proclaimed
the most lavish rock n roll production of all time,
was a huge claw.

20
Its My Life So Fuck Off
David would joke, Why do David
Bowie and Mick Jagger both feel
compelled to keep going out touring? Its
laughable. We never came up with an
answer.
Adrian Belew

By the end of 1987, David was spending little time

mourning the fate of Glass Spider. He had
something much more threatening on his mind a
lawsuit from a woman named Wanda Lee Nichols,
who accused Bowie of sexually assaulting her in a
Dallas hotel room, on 9 October, 1987.
As far as Davids immediate social circle was
concerned, if he had deep-seated worries about his

career he kept them to himself, but he didnt

conceal his worries about the Nichols lawsuit. It
was a big deal, says one friend. Hes not
invulnerable at all, it rattled the fuck out of him. It
wasnt so much the specific accusation which in
retrospect was bizarre, claiming that hed bitten
the woman and then mentioned he had Aids so
much as what it represented. He admitted to
spending the night with Nichols but claimed the
rest of her story was fantasy. From now on,
whenever he was enjoying the traditional perk of
his job in a hotel room, there was always the fear
of another accusation and lengthy lawsuit.
Although a grand jury declined to indict him a
month later, the accusation would hang over David
for nearly three years before being dismissed. In
the first few weeks that the ramifications of
Nichols accusations started to unfold, David
found a much-needed confidante in the form of
Sara Terry, press agent for Glass Spider. A
journalist for the Christian Science Monitor,
Terry had joined the tour for a break soon after
finishing a gruelling project on child prostitutes

and soldiers. She was a forthright, valued adviser,

being, in the words of friend Eric Schermerhorn,
cool, aggressive, subtle and intelligent an alpha
female just like Coco.
Saras husband, Reeves Gabrels, also dropped
in on the tour; not as outgoing as his wife, he was,
says his musician friend Kevin Armstrong, very
quiet, kind, funny, shy, intellectual, one of those
Americans with no mental barriers. Reeves
played guitar, and had studied at the prestigious
Berklee College of Music, but had previously
spent three years at art school. Hed never talked
about his musical ambitions with David, who
assumed he was a painter, but in the tours final
days, Sara slipped David a cassette tape of
Gabrels band, The Dark. After the tour, Sara
resumed her work with the Christian Science
Monitor and moved with Reeves to London. In
January 1988, David checked out the tape and soon
started recommending Gabrels for sessions. Then,
in June, it turned out he needed a guitarist, too. All
of a sudden, David Bowie was in a hurry again. It
happened really fast, says Gabrels. David called

me, I went over to Switzerland and we had this

music to do in a weekend.
The project was a collaboration with dance
troupe La La La Human Steps; Reeves came up
with an arrangement for Look Back in Anger,
with an extended, dark, clipped instrumental
passage: Because wed only really talked about
art before, when we did start working together all
our reference points for sound were painterly or
architectural. David was saying stuff like, We
should do something where the guitars are like
flying buttresses and cathedrals.
The first outward clue that Pepsi-sponsored,
pre-planned Bowie had been laid aside in favour
of art-house, improvised Bowie came in what was
an obscure but, for fans, legendary performance at
Londons Dominion Theatre in July 1988. The
nine-minute-long performance with the Quebec
dance company was part of a benefit for the
London ICA arts venue; Bowie learned his dance
steps, in which he acted mainly as a foil to the
lithe, muscular Louise Lecavalier, in two days. On
the night, there was a genuine sense of danger and

eroticism that had long been missing from his

music, as Lecavalier leapt over him, or cradled
him on her knees like a doll, while Gabrels,
Armstrong and Erdal Kizilcay produced their
twisted, gothic, drawn-out version of the old
Lodger song. The show was a convincing reminder
of Davids talent for snatching something
meaningful out of random strands.
Two weeks later, Gabrels went over to
Lausanne for a weekends visit. He ended up
staying a month. Every day wed drive down to
Mountain Studios in Montreux and just work on
stuff. Then go back and have a meal. Then watch
Fawlty Towers and go to sleep.
In those two weeks during July 1988, the pairs
discussion would lay the groundwork for David
Bowies next decade. The singer was open,
intelligent enough to realise his predicament, and
honest enough to acknowledge it. He told Gabrels
that, in the wake of his huge deal with EMI, hed
felt obliged to deliver hits and it was kind of
killing him, says Gabrels. Together, they talked
and talked, searching for the inspirations that

turned David on to music in the first place. In that

quest, to find that old sense of excitement, there
came the plan for what would become the Tin
Machine band project. If there was a plan, it was
that David just wanted to make the music that he
wanted to make, says Gabrels. One cool thing
was that we were listening to all the same stuff:
Led Zeppelin bootlegs, Cream bootlegs, Hendrix
bootlegs, Miles Davis Bitches Brew, Coltrane,
the Pixies, Sonic Youth, Glen Branca, Stravinsky,
John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and
Muddy Waters. Put all that in a blender and you got
Tin Machine.
The pairs discussions started a matter of days
before a chance meeting that summer, when David
was launching a video of the Glass Spider tour.
Iggys ex-bassist Tony Sales saw David, walked
up and surprised him. And a few weeks later we
were in Switzerland doing Tin Machine.
Today, Tony Sales cuts the same tall,
cadaverously handsome figure that fans of Lust for
Life and Tin Machine remember; he is calm and
well groomed, with the reasoned air of someone

who has gone through hell, and then recovery,

which is exactly what happened after the Sales
brothers split with Iggy. The way David Bowie
had parted from most of his bands seems like a
masterclass in sensitivity compared to how Iggy
sacked the brothers who had underpinned his best
solo album. According to Hunt Sales, Iggy
delivered their marching orders with the words,
Youre like heroin and I dont need you. Soon
afterwards, the brothers put together a twelvepiece soul band in LA, but on his way home after
yet another crazed show, Tony ended up in Cedars
Sinai hospital after crashing his car. They found
me dead with a stick shift in my chest. I was in a
coma for two and a half months. I almost died. And
it ruined our Sales brothers thing. During Tonys
months in hospital, Iggy was conspicuous by his
absence. David was the only celebrity friend who
came to see him, asking, When can we get you on
the road?
The bassists description of David as simply a
friend is at odds with the aloof, selfish figure
remembered by predecessors like Trevor Bolder,

yet his account is not unique. The standard history

of the formation of Tin Machine is a Bowiecentred one, which involves him using them to
detonate a controlled explosion, demolishing the
memory of his late eighties hubris. Yet according
to Sales, the urge to hang with his friends, and help
them, was just as powerful a motivation. Tony and
his drummer brother, Hunt, arrived at Montreux
Casino, hanging out and playing for a week along
with David, Reeves and producer Tim Palmer,
before the tiny group decided they needed a second
guitarist. Kevin Armstrong then, like Tony Sales,
attempting to rebuild his life, having turned into a
groupie-shaggin,
drug-sniffin
rock-monster
during his last tour with Iggy Pop answered the
call and did a double-take as he entered the huge
room. The most significant clue to the
psychological make-up of the band was laid out in
front of him, in the form of a line of amplifiers
for Reeves, Tony, Armstrong and David all
facing a huge podium in the middle of the room. On
top of the podium, which was scaled by means of a
ladder, was Hunt Sales drumkit, with its

monstrous twenty-four-inch bass drum. With this

kit, the feisty, funny, crazed drummer could beat
anyone into submission, without any electronic
assistance: He is the loudest drummer I have ever
worked with in my life, says Kevin Armstrong. I
almost went deaf within the first couple of days.
The power and the volume was simply super
human. Producer Tim Palmer had carefully placed
microphones around the studio to capture this
massive sound, and on Armstrongs first day, they
wrote and recorded Heavens in Here.
Hunt Sales was the kind of person who, as
Armstrong put its, consumes his own body weight
in dangerous substances every day. Everyone
around him loved his freedom and his
naughtiness. Tony, in contrast, was now a bornagain evangelist for the cause of teetotalism: if
David was standing nearby with a glass of wine in
his hand, he would administer a reproving lecture
on the dangers of alcohol. Tony restrained himself,
however, in the case of his brother, figuring such
arguments would end in violence. An amazing
musician, like his brother, Tony also had to

contend with a consequence of his car crash:

memory lapses which meant that at crucial points
hed sometimes forget chord sequences, which the
others had to shout in his ear.
Back in Berlin, when David had recorded with
the Sales brothers and Iggy, the cultural leitmotif
had been expressionism, Fritz Lang and Das Neue
Sachlichkeit. In Montreux, eleven years later, the
theme was Soupy Sales: the foul-mouthed, sexist,
undoubted comedy genius, who was of course the
inspiration for The Simpsons Krusty the Clown,
the kids entertainer with a filthy mind. During the
Mountain recording sessions, the Sales sons would
call their father on an international line and route
the phone call through the studio monitors, while
David, Hunt, Tony, Kevin and Reeves would fall
over laughing to monstrously amplified jokes, such
as:
What do 50,000 battered wives have in
common?
They dont fuckin listen!

More than anyone, Bowie deferred to Reeves; he

praised his experimentation, his stunt guitar, and
he also loved his virtuosity, encouraging him to
explore more extreme effects and sounds. Yet even
as Bowies lieutenant, there was little Gabrels
could do to pull his rhythm section into line. When
the Sales brothers joined, David decided this
should be a proper band, run as a democracy. In
reality, Gabrels thought, it was more like a
shouting match.
The bands initial jam sessions at Montreux
blended seamlessly into a recording project, with
Heavens in Here recorded on the first day, then
became semi-formalised with a move to Compass
Point a recording studio in the Bahamas, where
David stayed in Robert Palmers house near the
beach. The sessions went on and on; not aimless,
or desperate, just jams, with dozens of tracks
reportedly recorded. Sean Lennon popped in
during the school holiday with Joey, who was in
the process of dropping out of Gordonstoun.
Despite his schooling problems, Joey was a quiet,
unspoilt kid, a fan of The Smiths David claimed

to be a fan, too, but Joey seemed unconvinced. It

was hilarious for the band to watch their
exchanges, to see a man they thought of as the
coolest dad in the world trying to impress his son.
Sean, too, was earnest, thoughtful, the opposite of a
showbiz brat; it was in tribute to him that the band
recorded their own version of Johns Working
Class Hero.
The little community hanging around the beach
was augmented by Davids new girlfriend, Melissa
Hurley, a dancer from the Glass Spider tour. The
Sales brothers, rock n rollers to their core, rarely
talked to Melissa. Kevin Armstrong liked her: She
was a genuinely kind, sweet person. Just twenty
two-years old, with a voluptuous, almost Italian
figure and a mass of wavy dark brown hair, she
was caring, not at all pushy. She also had a classic
1980s fashion sense which sat poorly with Davids
refined cool; she bought him hats or brightly
coloured scarves which he would wear for a
couple of days before managing to lose them. He,
in turn, as a world citizen, and something of an art
teacher manqu, loved showing her new locations,

appreciating her delight; together, they seemed

relaxed, almost child-like, and there was little
surprise when, in May 1989, Melissas parents
announced that the couple had become engaged.
Davids indulgence of his new girlfriend was
charming; especially at the more ludicrous
moments, such as when Melissa persuaded him to
wear a thong, which he wore a couple of times on
the beach, affecting indifference to his bandmates
sniggers. Another comic touch was the presence of
hoary old British rockers Status Quo, working in
the adjacent studio, always ready to give tuition in
pool and table football. The unspoilt, carefree air
owed something to the gossip that Coco, often a
cause of tension between David and his musicians,
had found love and was living with a lawyer in
Los Angeles.
For one band member, though, the setting was
not a tropical paradise. A week or two into the
recordings, David walked over to Kevin
Armstrongs beach hut and told him that Tin
Machine had been conceived as a four-piece
theyd like to keep Armstrong on, but as a

background musician. For the guitarist, the news

was totally crushing. Yet Davids manmanagement was admittedly better than in the old
days; he was honest and open about Armstrongs
demotion, telling him theyd work together again
after Tin Machine which they did.
The Compass Point studio was in the most
perfect location, with white sand and sparkling
azure sea just moments away, and beautiful spartan
beach huts for the musicians, but the studios glory
days had passed with the death in a car crash of
manager and engineer Alex Sadkin, in 1987, and
there were frequent power-cuts and technical
problems. A few days into their stay there was a
tropical rainstorm: the sky went black, with huge
gobbets of rain beating on the tiny gaggle of
buildings. In this gothic deluge, they recorded I
Cant Read, a song of stark beauty, its throbbing
bass and chaotic guitar reminiscent of UK band Joy
Division who had, of course, based their sound
on Iggys The Idiot, and in turn would influence
emerging bands like Janes Addiction. The song
was one of several Tin Machine gems destined to

be overlooked in the noise and chaos surrounding

the band. Kevin Armstrong believes that was part
of the plan: I thought some of the best work didnt
make it to the first record. I think David was
deliberately trying to go for a fucked-up sound. If it
was too safe or polite, hed dump it. Some of the
missing songs, like Now, based on the La La La
Human Steps intro, would show up years later, in
Nows case as the title track of the Outside
album. The exclusion of anything that sounded
remotely conventional was designed to show
anyone, however cloth-eared, that the David
Bowie who made Never Let Me Down was
history.
The public debut of Tin Machine was cooked up
around a table at Compass Point: chatting, hanging
out, they decided it would be good to play live.
Later that night they walked up to the band playing
a small bar in Nassau and asked if they could use
their gear; forty or fifty stunned American tourists
goggled at the spectacle, mouthing at each other,
Is that who I think it is? as the band played a
short set featuring Heavens in Here. It was a

mess, but it was a huge buzz, says Armstrong,

just to see the reaction of the crowd. David loved
the vibe, the raw excitement of what they all called
the guerilla gig; together, they decided that was
how the band would proceed: a small gang, one for
all, all for one.
This could never be a truly equal gang, of course.
When the band finally started their club tour in
New York, on 14 June, 1989, it was David Bowie
who handed each of them $1000 to buy a Prada
suit for the show. And when the reviews for the
Tin Machine album appeared around its release on
22 May, 1989, it was naturally treated as another
record by David Bowie, rather than the debut by a
new outfit. The critical reaction was generally
positive Paul du Noyer of Q magazine called the
album a more accessible sort of record than were
used to while fans were ecstatic at the prospect
of seeing David Bowie play a club tour. They
queued for two days for some of the European
dates, at small venues like Amsterdam Paradiso
and Kilburns National Ballroom. David was

buoyed up, revelling in the energy of the crowd

and the sheer freedom. But there was tension, too;
he was always nervous of fans. Kevin Armstrong
had toured with Iggy in similar-sized venues, and
noticed he had a talent for calming down any fans
who were deranged or high; he could simply touch
their shoulder, like a Vulcan death-grip, and theyd
go all limp. David had never really worked in
those circumstances; by the time hed started
attracting real crowds in his Ziggy days, he had his
own security crew. Accosted by fans, hed be
polite, pleasant; if they were being too persistent
hed simply blank them, but he was always wary,
never quite as relaxed amid the mayhem as Iggy.
The shows themselves were, crazed, and huge
fun, says Armstong; a blast, according to Tony
Sales. But most proper bands gel as they play more
shows. With Tin Machine, says Armstrong, there
was no gelling. Musically, it never really gelled
because it was simply a battle. Hunt and Tony
were the solidest part, then Reeves is utter chaos
although Reeves and Hunt did develop a rapport in
the the end. But you never knew what was gonna

happen it was always on the edge. Then I was

shouting the chords to Tony most nights, because
his short-term memory is shot. You could hardly
play the same song in the same way twice. It
certainly wasnt comfortable for me.
According to Iggy, David didnt get as good
results out of his old rhythm section either: I have
to say, when they were with me, they swung more.
And indeed, alongside the band bonhomie, there
was a dull, dogmatic element to Tin Machine
shows, demonstrated by songs like their plodding
cover of Working Class Hero. It was this
worthiness, and the over-avoidance of the
conventional songs lamented by Kevin
Armstrong, which meant the initially warm
reception for Tin Machine which hit number
three in the UK, number twenty-eight in the US
soon petered out. The process was hastened by the
release of lumpen singles like Under the God,
backed with a workmanlike cover of Dylans
Maggies Farm. Democracy has its drawbacks.
As Gabrels pointedly observes, Sometimes a
benevolent dictatorshop can be a good thing.

For David, though, there was a unique buzz

about the band; he loved the Sales brothers vibe,
and Hunts special craziness. Gabrels did, too, at
first: They were like Dean Martin and Jerry
Lewis, he says. A handful. Then during Tin
Machine they suddenly became like Cain and Abel.
They made for a lot of extra tension, and
entertainment if you find tension entertaining.
One night in New York, Hunt had his manifesto
tattood on his back: in huge letters it read, Its
My Life. But that wasnt the complete manifesto
hed planned to have the words so fuck off
inscribed underneath, but told his bandmates that
the heavy Gothic lettering took so much work that
hed reached his pain threshold after the first three
words.
The inescapable predicament of Tin Machine, of
course, is that their democratic vision was a
Utopia. Bowie would always be blamed for
Gabrels or the Sales brothers artistic mistakes;
equally, their ideas and inventions would be
credited to him, too. EMI, meanwhile, had paid a
huge advance for the David Bowie brand, not

Tin Machine which would soon cause financial

problems. In the meantime, the man at the centre of
these contradictions simply enjoyed the experience
for what it was. I dont think David was frustrated
at any point, says Armstrong. Everyone was
aware that he could just whip this magic carpet
away but while it was there you cant avoid letting
the Sales brothers do their thing, because they are
very powerful people.
Davids relaxed attitude about Tin Machines
internal conflicts was understandable, given he
always had Brand Bowie to fall back on. Even as
the band booked their tiny club gigs in the spring of
1989, Isolar and Bill Zysblat, now Bowies
business manager, were pencilling in stadiums
across the world for a full year later, while David
was also preparing for the re-release of his RCA
albums.
In 1989, most record companies had hoovered up
maximum profits for minimal effort from fans who
were switching from vinyl to CD. The Beatles and
Stones CD reissues were both a notorious mess;

Bowies re-mastering of his album catalogue, in

comparison, was first-rate. He selected CD
specialists Rykodisc to master the albums and
release them in Europe, while EMI licensed them
in America. The new editions were a masterclass
in CD releases, incorporating rarities and superb
packaging, while a Sound + Vision boxset made
up a kind of alternative greatest hits, comprising
outtakes or alternate versions. If there was any
contradiction in the fact that one of the worlds
most forward-thinking artists was one of the first to
re-market his own history, it was overlooked,
given that he did it so much better than his peers.
The election of Bill Clinton as American president
in January 1993 would soon mark the accession of
the baby boomers to power. This generation
Bowie fans among them had more disposable
income than any of their predecessors. Experts like
David and Bill Zysblat who would soon lead the
way in promoting stadium tours with his company
RZO, maximising their financial returns were
there to help them spend it.
David had discussed the notion of a greatest hits

stadium tour with Reeves Gabrels within the first

few months of Tin Machines existence. But the
guitarist believed it didnt feel like my place to do
it. Appearing on stage with David for a greatest
hits tour would also make Tin Machine look like a
mere side-project, so Gabrels suggested a
musician he knew and respected, who also had a
link with Bowies back catalogue: Lodger guitarist
Adrian Belew.
Perfectly organised, impeccably choreographed
by douard Lock of La La La Human Steps and
presented with state-of-the-art video technology,
Sound + Vision was another groundbreaking tour.
An unadorned set was flanked by a huge screen
showing video footage, much of it a giant moving
image of David himself, with which the real singer
would interact. Marketed as the first and last time
David would do a Greatest Hits set, the tour
marked a period when ten of his reissued albums
all entered the British charts. What would
effectively be Bowies last grandstanding stadium
tour was, says musical director Adrian Belew,

sensational for both the musicians and the crowd.

Wed walk out and start playing ground control
to Major Tom, and it would overwhelm you, this
emotional feeling, then theres the video, the lights
and all these huge images floating around it
would absolutely give you the chills.
After eighteen years of touring, though, live
shows felt anything but sensational for David
Bowie, the artist who as a teenager had told his
manager he hated ballrooms and the kids.
Several times during the Sound + Vision tour,
which ran from 4 March to 29 September, 1990,
David would ask his MD, Why do David Bowie
and Mick Jagger both feel compelled to keep going
out touring? Why do we do this? Its laughable.
The topic was raised several times, but there was
no resolving it, says Belew.
David had once again deployed all his charm
when he called Belew, even suggesting using
Adrians own band: drummer Mick Hodges and
Rick Fox on keyboards. For Belew it was like a
dream come true, to bring my band, childhood
friends on tour I was like a kid with a handful of

candy.
For bassist Erdal Kizilcay, though, the tour was
horrible. There was a simple reason for the
conflicting account; it depended whether you were
in front of, or behind the screen. For the strippeddown visuals, it turned out Belew would be
Bowies main foil; the other three would remain
invisible: It was devastating for them when they
heard, says Belew. They get to play with Bowie
and nobody can see them.
For Erdal Kizilcay, a sponsorship deal arranged
for the opening dates in Canada exemplified the
seemingly intractable problem of Davids desire
both for cult status and mainstream income. David
had attracted derision for accepting the Pepsi
dollar in 1987. Labatts sponsorship of the opening
Canadian leg of the new tour was more damaging.
Proclaimed an industry breakthrough by the agency
that brokered it, the deal included a gap for the
sponsors message in the set, which fatally sapped
away its momentum. It was horrible, says Erdal
Kizilcay, people left the venue and didnt come
back again. I dont know how much money he got

for it but it blew up the highest point of the concert,

the middle fifteen minutes. Youd come back and
have to start warming up the people again, and it
was, No way.
Belew doesnt remember the sponsorship slot as
the main problem; instead, the design of a clear
metal stage, with amplifiers hidden underneath,
together with the four-man line-up, meant the music
would always come a distant second to the
innovative visuals. I was fairly disappointed
musically throughout the tour, with myself and
what we were able to do. We were under severe
restraint with a small band how do you play
Young Americans without a saxophone? Mike,
Rick and I had just come from a club tour where
the sound is warm and everyone can hear you
here for us it sounded metallic, the guitar sound
was thin. I wish I could have done a much better
job.
Despite the technical frustrations, David and
Adrian were in good spirits throughout most of the
tour; for the backstage boys, despite getting to use
Chrysler CEO Lee Iacoccas private jet for several

dates, and the plush hotels, it was boring. During

the performance, keyboardist Rick Fox was often
restricted to simply pressing a button to play a
sample or sequence; hence hed munch on a
sandwich or a burger if he was feeling peckish,
mid-set. Then one night, Erdal saw David make a
gesture in the middle of The Jean Genie, and
thought he was being signalled to emerge from
behind the curtain, which he did. Then: David
shouted at me, Get off! It was weird.
As the band sat on the plane at the end of the
show, David yelled and yelled at Erdal, says
Belew, and a quiet came over everyone. We just
sat there on the plane. It was horrible.
It was a one-off incident, but it showed how, for
all the musicians, You start with a lot of
excitement and enthusiasm, then gradually you
wear down, says Belew. But that time with Erdal
was the only scene which is pretty good for a
group of forty-five people travelling around the
world.
David himself made a good fist of enjoying the
tour he was more fun to be around than in 1978,

and took Belew out for a memorable night in Paris,

where he and Mick Jagger attempted to out-camp
each other on the dancefloor, in that distinctive
blend of friendship and schoolboy rivalry.
Throughout, hed vibe up Adrian, worked at
stretching him as a musician, while trying to
discuss ways he himself could tour and keep it
from being routine. He didnt complain, but it was
obviously hard work for him, although the band did
not quite believe his widely publicised statement
that this would be the last time hed play his hits
live; rather, it seemed a good marketing ploy.
David had introduced a telephone poll, asking fans
to nominate their favourite songs for inclusion in
the set, and as the tour reached Europe, the NME
launched a campaign to lobby for the inclusion of
The Laughing Gnome; he was unphased by their
cheekiness (although, sadly, they never played the
song). Even as the tour rumbled on through Europe
before its conclusion in South America, he
remained much less stressed than on the 1978 tour:
joking throughout, talking about Marlon Brando,
singing Beatles songs.

During the second half of the tour, it was

obvious David was having problems with Melissa;
it added to his rapport with Belew, with whom
hed chat about his problems his openness, the
fact he was still having girl troubles at forty-three,
was endearing. The band liked Melissa She was
a great person, but maybe not strong enough for
David, says Erdal, whod also seen her
occasionally in Switzerland but for the later
European dates she sat on the bus by herself. Then
she was gone. David was gracious about the split,
commenting hed worried it was becoming an
older men, younger girl situation and describing
her as such a wonderful, lovely, vibrant girl.
Some years later, Melissa married Patrick
Cassidy, brother of seventies teen heartthrob
David.
For the last few dates, in South America, there
was no room for the staging, so half the crew were
absent; together with an undercurrent of violence
from the police, it made for an oddly anti-climactic
finish for Davids last huge stadium tour. After the
last date, David said hed give Adrian a call

And here we are nineteen years later! says the

guitarist. But hes a fun person to be around. I
miss him.
Whatever the backstage frustrations, the end of the
Sound + Vision tour marked a life-changing
encounter for David, one whose significance he
realised a couple of weeks after the final date at
Buenos Aires River Plate Stadium on 29
September, 1990. A hairdresser friend, Teddy
Antolin, had arranged a blind date for David, on 4
October. Later, David would comment it was love
at sight, although in fact he been introduced to his
date three or four times before, at the theatre and
backstage at his LA show in May.
Iman Abdul Majid was an eighteen-year-old
political science major at Nairobi University when
wildlife photographer Peter Beard, a friend of the
writer Isak Dinesen, happened to spot her in May
1975; she eventually agreed to her first photoshoot
in return for having her tuition fees paid, and
caused a sensation on her arrival in New York
when she signed with the prestigious Wilhelmina

Models agency. Iman worked closely with Thierry

Mugler, and became a muse for Yves SaintLaurent. She established herself in the presupermodel era, when her main counterparts, says
Marie Claires then-Fashion Director, Emma
Bannister, were, Christie Brinkley, of Uptown
Girl fame, and Carol Alt real American cheese.
So Iman really stood out she was striking, strong
and African.
Iman finally became a household face, if not a
household name, through an advert for Tia Maria:
she smoulders and smiles briefly, her cheeks
striped in fluorescent green a true world citizen
selling ersatz exoticism and, by most accounts,
reviving the brand. At her peak, her earning were
exceeding $2 million a year, but by 1989 she
decided she had outstayed her welcome on the
modelling scene.
Nearly everyone whos met Iman describes her
using words similar to guitarist Eric
Schermerhorn, who says, She was very nice,
quieter than youd think and also not as tall as
youd think. Iman was attracted to David straight

away, but later said she truly fell in love when she
found he adored reading to people, just like her
father who was the Somali ambassador to Saudi
Arabia before his country was wracked by war
and was good at doing funny voices. As for David,
he later said he started thinking of childrens
names the night they met.
The couple spent a few months together in LA,
where they both owned houses, followed by an
idyllic six-week trip up and down the Italian coast.
If Iman had ever wondered what it would be like
being married to a rock n roller, she got a true
taste of it that summer. After rehearsals in St Mlo
and Dublin, Tin Machine hit the road for another
tour on 15 August, 1991, and continued playing,
almost night after night, all the way through to the
final show at Tokyos Budokan in February, 1992.
Together with the first Tin Machine tour, and his
huge stadium jaunt, it would be Davids longest
period on the road since his Spiders days. Iman
would travel with David for many of the shows in
America and Europe.
By the time the second Tin Machine tour came

round, Kevin Armstrong was booked elsewhere;

Eric Schermerhorn, a friend of Reeves Gabrels
from Boston, took his place. Seeing the band
chemistry up close, he was amazed to see how
laid-back Bowie was. But he also realised what it
was like for the singer, with three opinionated,
boisterous musicians in constant competition. Hunt
Sales was a brilliant drummer; the hedonistic
swagger of his drum intro to Lust for Life would
earn decades worth of royalty checks for both
Iggy and Bowie. Schermerhorn found Hunt the
most vibrant character in the band, but the most
troublesome. It was obvious that David shared his
opinion: I think he watched Hunt self-destruct and
I think it angered him, in that he was trying to help
him. I think Hunt had a lot of resentment for his
brother and David. Stay out of my business. Its my
life so fuck off.
Schermerhorn, as a neutral party, got to hear
everybodys complaints. I was close to Hunt
because nobody else was. I was the in-between
guy with everybody. Between all three of them they
would come to me telling me all different things. I

wanted to keep it all running smoothly because I

liked them all. Gabrels, meanwhile, had the
thankless role of band manager: The good news,
and the bad news, was I was the guy who looked at
the books every week with the tour manager and
the office, keeping an eye on the money so I was
keeping the Sales brothers from renting limousines
and the band from getting charged for David
wanting a bigger hotel room because Iman was
coming to visit, things like that. My sideburns
actually went grey in three months on that tour.
David remained generally oblivious of the
bands internal disputes. Only upcoming shows in
the bigger cities worried him he was surprisingly
nervous, and gave better performances at the
smaller venues. Even twenty-five years into his
career, he still followed his press coverage too
closely, but was relaxed about the increasingly
vociferous critical drubbings the band were now
receiving: He understood it happens with
everyone, say Gabrels, that it cycles.
It was not just the critics who were
unimpressed. After promising early numbers for

the Tin Machine debut, sales had tailed off rapidly,

with none of its singles cracking the Top 40. EMI
baulked at the prospect of another Tin Machine
album; the band signed instead to Polygram
offshoot Victory, the brainchild of Phil Carson,
whod worked with Led Zep at Atlantic.
Ultimately, the public was as unenthusiastic as
EMI; Tin Machine II boasted some wonderful
songs, like Bowie and the Sales brothers
translucently beautiful Goodybe Mr. Ed, and
Gabrels Shopping for Girls but, like the live
dates, it didnt quite gel. For Gabrels, the
experience was frustrating: I would have had one
less Hunt Sales vocal on the record, but David
seemed unconcerned. For him, playing and touring
with Tin Machine allowed him to act like a
normal bloke, says Eric Schermerhorn. Hed be
blown away by the most mundane things. One time
in Minneapolis walking into a pawn shop, with
loads of used radios and beat boxes, he bought a
used boom box for $65. He was, This is great! It
was like hed never done that stuff.
Travelling with a band as opposed to with a

bunch of employees, as on the Sound + Vision tour

brought out a side of him often hidden under The
Dames snootiness. He was surprisingly open,
trying to round up his bandmates for trips to local
junk stores or museums mates to keep him
company and share the view; he was often
emotional, especially after the occasional raid on
his hotel minibar, and for a man whod been so
ruthless with himself, and his musicians, there
were odd, nostalgic notes. His bandmates noticed
how he seemed to keep and catalogue everything:
drumsticks, clothing, guitar picks. The collecting
demonstrated his odd relationship with his own
past: often hed be reluctant to talk about old
works, yet once he started you often couldnt stop
him then hed reveal how many old features on
himself hed read, how many errors he wanted to
correct.
Much of the apparent contradiction was
explained by the fact he was still a record nerd,
who treasured the albums hed bought thirty years
ago from Medhursts or Dobells. He didnt want
to play Space Oddity every night until he was an

old man; yet he needed his own records to slot

alongside those of Little Richard and Iggy Pop in
some High Fidelity-style ranking of the rock n
roll greats. Later that year hed venture to
Llangynwyd in South Wales, telling locals he was
researching the genealogy of the Jones family. It
was not a mid-life crisis, but there was an
overwhelming urge to work out how hed got here,
and what his legacy would be.
Over the autumn of 1991 that occasional
vulnerability alternated with skittish excitement:
mainly because he planned to ask Iman to marry
him. He put the question twice, both times in Paris,
around 29 October the first on the Seine, to the
strains of April in Paris; the second at the Paris
LOlympia, where he repeated his proposal on
stage, in French, then played some saxophone as
his fans cheered. It could have been hokey, but he
was pretty amazing, says Schermerhorn.
It was just a couple of weeks later, in November
1992, that Bowie found himself in Brixton: looking
out through the windows at Stansfield Road,

wondering how life would have turned out if hed

been a shipping clerk or an accountant, crying.
Then at the show at the Brixton Academy
Davids childhood cinema that evening, Hunt
Sales hogged the mic for at least two songs too
many, and a third of the audience left before the
end.
The journey with Tin Machine had been idyllic,
in a fucked-up way, but it was coming to an end. I
remember once in the back of the bus, talking with
the whole band and him saying, Listen you guys,
Im getting older, says Schermerhorn. I heard
David say, I dont want to be doing this for ever. I
want to make one more record. He didnt want to
fuck around.
In public, David remained strongly committed to
Tin Machine; he said at the beginning of the project
that theyd produce three albums, and there was no
sign of his reneging. But out in Japan, he gently
asked Schermerhorn what he was planning to do
next and offered to make a few calls for him. Soon,
Schermerhorn would help Iggy Pop craft his last
great record, 1994s American Caesar; an album

partly inspired by Davids suggestion that Iggy

start reading history books. They were amazing,
complementary characters. They would each ask
me about the other. Its amazing: each one wants
what the other has got. Maybe Iggy was the better
front man. But David was a better boss he
wanted people to succeed after theyve worked
with him. He didnt have to help me, but he did.
The tour ended at the Budokan on 17 February,
1992. For the Sales brothers there were no regrets,
says Tony, who ascribes much of the reaction to
the band as down to fans conservatism. People
like the excitement of something different, but if
you try to change, it terrifies them and they cant
accept it. Gabrels believes the project achieved
Davids aims, if not the bands. Tin Machine fell
on the grenade of not just Glass Spider but Never
Let Me Down and Tonight. I think the intentions
were good at the start and then it got
sidetracked.
Reeves Gabrels was one of many people who,
during their time with David, debated the nature of
fame: like gold, or diamonds, it was seen as

precious, but its inherent value was impossible to

determine. Reeves conclusion was that it was a
pile of shit; David, for all his contradictions, was
addicted to it. Even if he abhorred the intrusions of
the media, his insecurities demanded he court
them, for his public persona how he was
perceived was now an intrinsic part of his own
self-image. Thus the most personal, anguished
emotions were both something to be concealed and
to be displayed most famously at the memorial
concert for Freddie Mercury, which took place a
few weeks after the close of the Tin Machine tour,
on 20 April, 1992.
The show was a strange mix, reflecting Queens
quixotically diverse fan base: from heavy
metallers like Guns N Roses, through to Liz
Taylor and Liza Minnelli. David showed an
effortless understanding of the event; for if Freddie
wasnt a truly close friend, their careers were
closely intertwined, as two of the songs performed
that night, All the Young Dudes a favourite of
Brian Mays and Under Pressure illustrated.
David looked composed and impossibly well

groomed in mint-green suit and Action Man hair,

next to Annie Lennox, who was seemingly made-up
as Pris, the pleasure model replicant from
Bladerunner, and nuzzled provocatively against
his cheek at the songs climax.
The nights real resonance would come from the
presence of Mick Ronson, a man whod been as
crucial an influence on the sound of Queen as
David himself; Davids one-time lieutenant had
been diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer the
previous August. Yet even the unflappable Ronson
looked uncomfortable when, at the close of
Heroes, David knelt on one knee and narrated the
Lords Prayer. The press reaction ranged from
supportive to ridicule. Few commented on what an
old-fashioned figure he cut alongside Annie
Lennox, who could have been him twenty years
earlier.
Just four days after the Wembley show, David
married Iman in a private civil ceremony in
Montreux; once more, Davids simultaneous
yearning for privacy and publicity was reflected by

the public celebration at the American Church of St

James in Florence which followed. The nuptials
were celebrated in a twenty-three-page Hello!
magazine cover story. David wore white tie; Iman
a Herve Leger oyster dress with train. Joey was
best man, Geoff MacCormack read Psalm 121, and
Peggy had her photo taken with Bono. Yoko Ono
and Brian Eno were among the guests. There were
many flashes of humour in the accompanying
interview, as well as instances of history being
rewritten: I dont think I ever really had what we
could call a proper marriage, he says, of his days
with Angie. There was a conventional, happy air,
as if he were grateful finally to put aside his days
of androgyny and transcending moral codes, and
start over.
While many of the sentiments were standard
Hello! fare Davids comments on how his friend
Thierry Mugler had done a delightful job of
designing his suit there were many moments of
insight, more than in some of the more probing
interviews to which David had been subjected. His
open statement that, while he is not formally

religious, God plays a very important part in my

life, as well as his admission that he spent his first
few weeks with Iman worried that his silly sense
of humour might put her off, were both
illuminating demonstrations of how, in his forties,
he was happy to admit to the strong streak of
conventionality that had always run through him.
If the wedding was memorable, the album that
marked it would be generally forgotten
continuing Bowies unhappy recent tradition of
attempting for commercial crossover and failing.
David felt pressured into recruiting Nile Rodgers
as producer for this next work, says Reeves
Gabrels. Rodgers had gotten over his resentment
that, in the wake of Lets Dance s huge sales,
David had barely mentioned its producer. He
found, though, that he and Bowie had different
intentions for this new album right from the start: I
literally said, David, lets kick Lets Dance in the
ass, says Rodgers. He said, No, its
impossible. We cant do that. What do you mean
we cant? I dont know.

Reeves Gabrels, meanwhile, felt wed put all

this effort into trying to get rid of the stuff that
followed Lets Dance to change expectations and
allow David to be an artist again. So I was
irritated by the notion, but, for whatever reason,
they decided to do it. David, in turn, had an
entirely different agenda, according to Nile
Rodgers. He made that record to mark his
wedding. Thats what he told me. I kept thinking,
Well Lets Dance and China Girl would have
played fine at a wedding.
Black Tie White Noise betrayed the mix of
motives behind it; taken on its own merits, as a
snapshot of influences, it made sense, was
endearing even, with its backstory of the wedding,
the LA riots, even, in Dont Let Me Down &
Down, a song written by a Mauritanian princess
and rendered both in the Indonesian language and a
Brixton patois. The album was launched with the
usual fanfare, a collective sigh of relief from the
critical community that David had apparently
terminated his Tin Machine experimentation, as
well as extensive promotion by Davids new

record company, Savage, an ambitious start-up

business who paid a reported $3.4 million for the
record in order to establish their credibility a
deal which ultimately ruined the company, which
declared itself bankrupt in December 1993 amid a
flurry of lawsuits.
David was relaxed and playful during the
sessions; there were many flashes of his old
brilliance. When Nile was about to record his
guitar solo for the twitchy, insistent Miracle
Goodnight, David used one of his trademark, leftfield instructions. Imagine the fifties never
existed, he told me. I went, Wow, now were in
some nebulous era because if the fifties hadnt
happened there would be no Jeff Beck and
Hendrix. It was a great direction. Gabrels,
meanwhile, contributed most of his guitar work
when Nile was filming the The Tonight Show in
California, working on several songs including
Youve Been Around and a cover of Creams I
Feel Free a song that David had lately revived
with Tin Machine. Bowie recorded the song, he
mentioned later, in tribute to Terry, and the Cream

show at the Bromel Club that they had attended

together; a second song, Jump They Say,
addressed his ex-brother more directly.
I Feel Free was shrouded in two layers of
loss. There had been regular exchanges between
Bowie and the ailing Mick Ronson throughout the
year; David had sent several songs for the album
Ronson was struggling to complete, and had
publicly complimented Micks production of
Morrisseys Your Arsenal . The new version of I
Feel Free was essentially complete before
Ronson arrived in the studio to contribute his
signature sound; Gabrels solo was wiped to make
way for his predecessor. It wasnt sad it was
simply great to play with him and to have him
around, says Nile Rodgers. Mick just did it and it
was cool.
Ronsons presence on Black Tie White Noise
helped generate a flurry of press on the albums
release in April 1993; whereas David had been
careful to avoid the role of elder statesman in the
eighties, he bowed to the inevitable in the early
nineties, a time when the influence of Ziggy

Stardust was at its peak thanks to Britpop pioneers

Suede: the partnership of Bernard Butlers
muscular guitar and singer Brett Andersons
feyness closely mirrored the Ronson/Bowie
relationship.
Interviewed with Anderson for the NME in
March, David was genial, relaxed, effortlessly
taking on the mantle of founding father of Britpop
which, in most fundamental respects, he deserved,
for various phases of his own career had indeed
made their mark on The Smiths, Suede and Blur.
The NME story helped generate a sense that David
was back to making personal, rather than corporate
albums: the intensity of Jump They Say powered
the single to number nine in the UK charts, while
Black Tie White Noise debuted at number one in
the UK.
The albums sales were a powerful vindication
of Bowies scorched-earth policy with Tin
Machine, and seemed also to show him fitting
neatly into the nineties, while acknowledging his
own past influences like Mick and Terry with a
new honesty. Mick Ronsons death, on 30 April,

emphasised the passing of an era. Yet its aftermath

showed that not all of Davids demons had been
exorcised.
Shortly after Ronsons death, David paid a
fulsome tribute to his best-known lieutenant: He
was really up there in the so-called hierarchy with
the great guitar players superb, absolutely
superb.
There had been no formal reconciliation after
their seventies split, for one was not really needed
Ive got no complaints, why would I? Ronson
told this writer in 1989 but Bowies relationship
with the guitarist who had, more than any other
musician, powered him to fame, remained
troubled. The issue flared up at Ronsons
memorial concert at the Hammersmith Odeon the
following April, an event at which Bowie was
conspicuously absent.
Trevor Bolder, Bowies Spiders bassist and
Ronsons old friend, was told, He had a couple of
issues with some people on the bill and he didnt
want to get involved. Bolder also heard that
David was worried about playing to a small

crowd. Fair enough. Its sad you have to worry

about [such] things. Others involved in the event,
like Suzi Fussey-Ronson, ask, If he felt that the
event wasnt big enough for him, why couldnt he
have made a video, to at least say something?
Quizzed on this subject in 1998, Bowie
responded: The truth is I was not convinced by the
motivations of this event but, frankly, I prefer to
stay silent. Many of Davids fans questioned his
motivations especially considering his presence
at Freddie Mercurys memorial. Perhaps the
rivalry between Bowie and Ronson survived the
guitarists death. For instance, in his otherwise
illuminating contributions to Mick Rocks book,
Moonage Daydream, Bowie comments, Another
of Micks singular abilities was the ability to
take a hook line that I might whistle or play badly
and make it sing we worked well together
because of this talent of his as an interpreter. Suzi
Ronson was one of many who were offended by
Bowies condescending attitude: Like David had
arranged all his bloody solos. I spent $500 on that
book and sent it back, saying I was disgusted. Mick

Rock and I didnt speak for a while after that.

Ken Scott, the producer who witnessed their
collaboration, agrees there were indeed instances
where David was very specific indeed about some
instrumental passages Moonage Daydream in
particular but as for the suggestion that David
humming Micks solos to him was their normal
practice, I wouldnt agree. No. Thats not the way
I remember it. The frostiness between the Bowie
and Ronson camps was maintained with Davids
reference in the same book to Suzi Fussey,
Ronsons wife and Davids long-serving personal
assistant, as a local hairdresser in Bromley or
Beckenham. There were, obviously, parts of
Davids past with which he was not quite at peace.
Bowies belated, ungracious comments on
Ronson were counterproductive: a case of The
Dame doth protest too much, suggesting that David
was more aware than he cared to admit how
integral Ronson had been to his breakthrough.
Certainly, the negligible long-term impact of Black
Tie White Noise a pleasant, competent album
which soon vanished from human consciousness

along with the record company that released it

seemed to show how reliant David was on a
musical foil; a Ronson or a Brian Eno whom he
could feed off, who made his music gel. Without
one, he seemed to be locked into a cycle of
diminishing returns.
But that foil, that source of inspiration, didnt
have to be a musician; for in the case of David
Bowies best album in nearly a decade, a rushed
commission done on a tight budget, the vital spark
came from a relatively obscure novel about a
Bromley childhood, which was turned into a film
by the BBC.
The genesis of the project that would re-ignite
Bowies creativity came in the closing minutes of a
Q&A with one of Davids favourite magazines,
Interview, famously founded by Andy Warhol in
1969. As so often, the magazine sent a celebrated
name to interview the months cover star, and the
choice of writer Hanif Kureishi was particularly
astute: the novelist, like David, was a Bromley boy
and a fellow ex-student of Bromley Tech. In the

closing moments of the encounter, Kureishi

mentioned the BBC were planning a TV version of
his 1990 novel, Buddha of Suburbia, based on
Kureishis own upbringing in south-east London.
Cheekily, Kureishi asked if David would
contribute the soundtrack. Instantly, David agreed.
The pair were huddled over a mixing desk at
Mountain Studios just a few days later.
The recording fell into two sections: the first a
more conventional soundtrack, written against a
video of the shows. Kureishi dropped in to
observe, overawed by the fact his own work was
being screened over a mixing desk, dotted with
dozens of buttons, levers and swinging gauges,
and later by the fact that David, noticing a couple
of pieces changed the mood of key scenes, quickly
rewrote them. Then, most of the themes used to
soundtrack the drama were extended into a full
Bowie album. Buddha of Suburbia, like so many
of Bowies triumphs, from The Idiot to Absolute
Beginners, benefited from its rushed creation.
Something happened for that album, says Erdal
Kizilcay. There wasnt a big budget, David

explained the story before we started. It was a

challenge, it was a small budget, but David just
said, Lets go, lets do it, and everything
worked.
Throughout the 1990s, countless music critics
remember that, every time a new David Bowie
album was biked into the office, it would be
preceded by a PRs guarantee that, Its his best
since Scary Monsters. Probably the only album
sent over without such blandishments, it was the
one most worthy of them; in its modest way, the
Buddha of Suburbia album was a perfect
evocation, not just of Kureishis youth, but of his
fellow Bromley boy, now aged forty-six.
There were plenty of nostalgic moments in the
Buddha album, but perhaps its most pervasive
connection with its own life was that, like all his
best works, it was made without thinking too much
moments snatched out of the ether. Bowie and
Kizilcay worked alongside each other, Bowie
using the instrumentalist as a kind of one-man
sound library. Theyd work from 10 a.m. until 8
oclock at night joking, eating burgers, playing

records by Prince or Nine Inch Nails to get them

into the mood. A fair amount of the time, theyd
talk about Turkey; Erdal was a cultural transplant
in Switzerland, like Hanif Kureishi was in
Bromley as was David, the kid whod once
fondly imagined himself the English Elvis.
A couple of songs had been sketched out on
demo notably the subtle but anthemic Strangers
When We Meet, which David had attempted with
Reeves during the Black Tie White Noise sessions
but most of them were put together as first takes.
Theyd discuss an idea or chord sequence and
Erdal would say, Ill try it. Then David would
laugh, Dont try it play it! Erdals own life
journey was absorbed into the work, a huge amount
of which was his improvisation for instance, the
gloriously meandering South Horizon, in which
Kizilcays simple trumpet motif, swinging drums
and busy bass duel with the piano of Mike Garson,
whod just reappeared on the scene and
overdubbed his part on the other side of the
Atlantic.
Yet if the musicianship was Erdals, the driving

force was David: He is just a master he knows

exactly what he wants. I was like his hands, his
musical hands. Even the more electro tracks
heavily influenced by the newly emergent
Underworld were tougher and more south
London than the glossy sheen of White Ties dance
songs. The Mysteries was based on an Austrian
classical work, sampled and reversed, rather like
Lows Subterraneans. Fragments of the lyrics
were straightforward autobiography, mostly the
title track, which mentions Plaistow Grove, by the
railway tracks; Terry, too, is invoked through the
words ouvre le chien, a quote from Davids
1970 song dedicated to his brother, All the
Madmen.
The album sneaked out in Britain in November
1993, almost unnoticed (it would wait another two
years for a US release on BMG) although the title
track reached number thirty-five in the UK singles
chart. It was the best David Bowie album in a
decade, and the first in twenty-two years to
entirely miss the charts. Its creator, the man always
focused on success, seemed not only unconcerned,

says his collaborator, Erdal Kizilcay, He was

very happy.

21
The Hearts Filthy Lesson
Ive got to think of myself as the luckiest
guy Robert Johnson only had one
albums worth of work as his legacy.
David Bowie

By 1994, David had apparently expended almost

as much energy in transforming himself into an
underground artist as he had in transforming
himself into a star. Yet no one could have possibly
confused his lifestyle with that of a musician
struggling to make ends meet. David and Iman
largely divided their time between Los Angeles,
Lausanne and Mustique, where he retained an
immaculately groomed house, furnished in the
airbrushed ethnic style purveyed by the most

expensive international interior designers. There,

he posed for Architectural Digest magazine atop
an antique Indian mahogany lounger. My
ambition, he told writer William Buckley, is to
make music so incredibly uncompromised that I
will have absolutely no audience left whatsoever
and then Ill able to spend the entire year on the
island.
The comments were partly a reflection of the
Bowie sense of humour, but there was a serious
core to the sentiment. Over the late nineties, a
string of worthy, arty projects a one-man show of
twenty years worth of paintings at a gallery on
Londons Cork Street in 1995 and a position on the
editorial board of Modern Art magazine a year
later gave the impression that he was simply a
rich hobbyist. It wasnt true, though. In reality, his
compulsion to keep busy couldnt be kept in check
for ever, and within months of this statement, he
was planning one of the most extreme recording
experiences of his career an art project, but one
he would struggle to keep uncompromised.
Mike Garson was the restlessly inventive pianist

who had transformed Aladdin Sane, and last

played with David on Young Americans. Like
many musicians decades into their career, hed
wondered if he could match the creativity of his
youth. In March 1994, he started his first complete
album with David in twenty years, with those
doubts nagging at him. Personally, I didnt think I
could really meet the mark or come up to the
standard that I had set on Aladdin Sane. I was
thinking, Could I top that? I was a little doubtful.
But there was this great affinity and rapport. I still
remember thinking to myself, This is special. It
was a gem, to me.
The inspiration for the new project came from
Davids chats with Brian Eno at his wedding. Eno
was, of course, hot property as a producer thanks
to his work on U2s electrifying Achtung Baby, an
album steeped in the sound of Bowie, Eno and it
needs stressing Tony Viscontis experiments in
Berlin. Once theyd decided to work together, their
collaboration started to take shape through what
was, in 1994, the most high-tech of methods.
Reeves Gabrels first heard about the planned

album just after hed completed a tour with Frees

Paul Rodgers. He walked into a hotel rooom in
Oklahoma City with the strains of All Right Now
ringing in his head and saw a fax from Eno lying on
the floor. Soon fax machines around the world
were spooling out apparently impossible concepts
and intractable questions: One idea that David
and Brian were trying to figure out was almost like
a Charles Ives thing where you have two songs
playing simultaneously then have them suddenly
link up where the same word, beat, everything was
right on the same spot: a mathematical problem.
In essence, the work harked back to Davids
first trip to America, when hed discovered the
music of outsiders like Iggy Pop, the Legendary
Stardust Cowboy and the fake Lou Reed. Hoping to
tap a similar source in their quest to record the
most extreme music of their careers, Bowie and
Eno ventured, in January 1994, to the Gugging
Hospital near Vienna, where psychiatrist Leo
Navratil had assembled a group of patients who
would become known as Outsider artists. In 1981,
Navratil opened a formal Haus der Knstler

(house of artists) within the hospital, where these

artists could live and work as a community. Bowie
told Interview magazine later, Some of them dont
even do [their art] as an expression of themselves;
they do it because their work is them. Their
motivation for painting and sculpting comes from a
different place than that of the average artist whos
sane on societys terms.
Interviewer Ingrid Sischy was sensitive enough
not to ask the obvious question: whether David
Bowies half-brother might have benefited from a
similarly enlightened regime, rather than the
depressing, under-staffed confines of Cane Hill.
Unsurprisingly, David and Eno were both very
affected by the experience of visiting the Haus der
Knstler.
In some way the album sessions, which started
in March 1994, were like a replay of the Berlin
days; for Garson it was a throw-back to
Philadelphia and Young Americans , his last full
album outing with Bowie. The two had been
reunited after a chance remark by writer Jrome
Soligny, who happened to mention that the pianist

had quit Scientology. Partly inspired by the news

that Garson was no longer a parson, Bowie called
him a few days later to overdub piano to Buddha.
But for their first meeting in a studio in nearly
twenty years, there was no nostalgia, says Garson:
He just settles into it and thats all that exists at
that moment in time. If I was to meet him tomorrow
Id have to come in as a fresh artist none of the
things from the past would mean anything.
Today, Garson expresses no regret at his twodecade separation from David; rather there is an
admiration for Davids immersion in the present.
We would sit down every morning when we got
in the studio, push RECORD and just play and play
and play. It was a wonderful experiment and it
turned into great music. There were times when
David and Brian would play us tracks through the
headphones; wed be listening to a Marvin Gaye
song and improvising against it, then theyd take
that away and mess around with what we got from
that based on how we were influenced by that
piece. I thought that was brilliant.
Reeves Gabrels arrived in Lausanne roughly a

week before the album sessions to write, and just

to hang out. In this new context, he realised how
David might have eight hours set aside, six of
which would be spent talking: but all of that
informs the two hours when the flash happens.
The sessions were consciously arranged as an art
happening. Each musician had his own corner in
the studio; when David wasnt setting up their head
space, talking to them and making suggestions, he
stood at an easel, sketching the band in charcoals.
He constructed his lyrics using a randomising
programme on his Apple Powerbook to recreate
the old cut-up technique hed used on Diamond
Dogs. As in Berlin, he was using words for their
sounds and associations, rather than a linear
narrative.
Eno had prepared role cards for the participants,
aimed at forcing them out of stock ideas and
responses. At times, Garson remembers Eno
holding up cards signalling chord changes and
being ignored by the Reeves-Garson-Kizilcay trio:
Erdal was incredible, like a one-man jazz-rock
fusion ensemble, all filtered through his growing

up in Turkey. He was like, I dont get this shit,

what is this shit? He would ultimately play
incredibly well.
In this new atmosphere, Kizilcay, whod worked
on Bowie sessions since the pre-production for
Lets Dance , felt uncomfortable. He missed the
musical intimacy of the Buddha sessions and he
was not a fan of Brian Enos Oblique Strategies, in
which each musician was assigned a character:
He wrote me something like that I was an Arabic
Sheik and I wanted to marry this guys daughter
so I needed to show him I can play psychedelic,
arabesque funk. But I dont need a letter to play
Oriental stuff!
Gabrels was more receptive: Mine was,
Youre on the third moon of Jupiter and youre the
house band. I liked that. What was funny was I
would sometimes play that game in my head
anyway. Garsons card read, You are the morale
booster of a small ragtag terrorist operation. You
must keep spirits up at all costs. Bowie, when he
wasnt sketching, was a town crier in a society
where the media networks have tumbled down.

For Garson, this was a powerful experience:

There was a camera, too. Hours of it every day
just running, fixed cameras on each of us. So they
knew it was special on some level. Then David
doing charcoals of everybody as were
improvising
was
almost
like
another
instrumentalist playing, part of the creation. All of
the musicians remember the genesis of certain key
songs, including The Hearts Filthy Lesson, as
dating from this period, with over thirty-five hours
of songs that evolved over the sessions. When
complete, the work was edited into two CDs
worth of material, titled Leon. Brian Eno, in
particular, was keen to release the results as a
black label with no name on it, says Gabrels:
Let it leak that it was David Bowie but put it out
as a completely separate entity, like Princes Black
Album. Use it as a work of art and also something
that creates interest for the next project.
As they laboured in the smoke-fogged studio at
Mountain, with both Bowie and Gabrels chainsmoking one Marlboro after another, the way
ahead seemed clear. For David, there was an

obvious artist on whom to model himself: Scott

Walker, the man who had turned him on to Jacques
Brel and whose career he had followed for twenty
years now, since hearing the singer in Lesley
Duncans room at Redington Road. According to
Gabrels, Scott Walker was still one of Davids
heroes, and the small group of musicians saw
their project in a similar uncompromising vein to
Scotts more challenging works.
But near completion of the album, David
encountered exactly the same problems finding a
sympathetic record company that had plagued Scott
Walker. The best prospect was Virgin America,
now owned by EMI; according to Gabrels, it was
on their persuasion that David reworked the album
over January 1995, mostly at the Hit Factory in
New York. Carlos Alomar returned to contribute
sublime rhythm guitar to I Have Not Been to
Oxford Town. Over the same period, they
introduced another version of Strangers When We
Meet, Thru These Architects Eyes and Hallo
Spaceboy, which originated from a Reeves
ambient tune called Moondust.

Soon after the New York sessions, Kevin

Armstrong got a call to turn up at West Side
studios in London; his own song, Now, recorded
for the first Tin Machine album but left in the vault,
was reworked as the title track of Outside;
Armstrong also added guitar to The Hearts Filthy
Lesson and Thru These Architects Eyes. The
songs dark, gothic atmosphere was offset by the
breezy presence of Sabrina Guinness, heiress and
ex-girlfriend of Prince Charles. Guinness had
recently returned from Hollywood and was setting
up a video workshop for deprived kids, who
filmed the sessions. Brian Eno agreed to a taped
interview with the children, the intellectual guru
turned total sweetheart: He was absolutely
charming with them, says Armstrong; the kids, in
turn, added their voices to The Hearts Filthy
Lesson.
That song caused one of the first artistic
disagreements between Gabrels and his boss,
showing how hard it could be for a musician who
was simply an employee. After recording the first
version, Bowie had second thoughts and re-

recorded his vocals with new lyrics based on the

theme of English landscape painters. Gabrels
voiced his reservations: Maybe I was too critical,
so he said, Why dont you go away and come
back in two hours? says Gabrels. I came back
and heard it and said, David, thats nice and all
but its kind of destroyed the essence of the song,
dont you think? And he just waved his hand,
Fine, well just move on. No no, David, I dont
mean to hurt you. No, forget it, well just go to
another track. Well come back to that next
month.
The pair never discussed the subject again, but
when it came to the mix, David had reverted back
to the original. The final version eventually ended
up in a celebrated slot over the end titles to David
Finchers twisted serial-killer movie, Se7en
perhaps a treatise on English landscape artists
would not have done the trick in that setting.
It was, of course, typical of the entertainment
industry that David and Brian had started the
project inspired by an artistic community who
were blissfully heedless of commercial pressures,

and then had to rework their initial concept to get a

record deal. Yet the album would soon undergo a
second reworking at Davids hands, intended to
restore the art-house element he thought had been
lost. Over 1995, he added spoken-word
recordings, reshaping the album into a concept
piece based on a surreal murder story hed written
for Q magazine in late 1994 called The Diary of
Nathan Adler: what Bowie called a non-linear
gothic drama hyper-cycle. The plot revolved
around the murder and dismemberment of fourteenyear-old runaway Baby Grace Blue, her body parts
destined for a Damien Hirst-esque artwork, with
Bowies Nathan Adler providing a Philip
Marlowe-style voiceover in a dodgy Brooklyn
accent.
Challenging, complex, often thrilling, over-long
and in the spoken segues undoubtedly selfindulgent, 1.Outside finally made it to the record
shops on 25 September, 1995, eighteen months
after the first Montreux sessions. Its release met
with a deluge of media attention, most of it effusive
bold and fascinating said Tom Doyle of Q

although dissenters, like the San Francisco

Examiner, proclaimed it pretentious and nearly
tuneless.
In what would soon prove a habit, Bowie chose
to lead with an uncompromising single The
Hearts Filthy Lesson accompanied by a
deliberately provocative video directed by Sam
Bayer, also responsible for Nirvanas Smells
Like Teen Spirit. The video was a magnificently
squelchy snuff-movie assemblage, whose cabinet
of freaks and sepia styling echoed the video for
Nine Inch Nails Closer which was famously
screened on MTV with Scene Removed placards
to denote the cuts. As was surely intended, MTV
duly refused to screen Bowies promo, which was
later broadcast in edited form, and the single
limped to ninety-two in the US, thirty-five in the
UK.
Bayers video the MTV kids with body
piercings and tattoos assembling a Minotaur from
spare body parts embodied the mid-nineties
aesthetic so perfectly as to suggest that Bowie was
merely jumping on a fashionable bandwagon. If

anyone had form for that crime, it was he. Yet, in

fairness, artists like Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn
Manson, Nine Inch Nails and of course Nirvana,
who had recorded their limpid version of Man
Who Sold the World back in November, 1993, all
took elements of their dense, claustrophobic sound
from Bowie. In any case, Bowies incursion into
the MTV alternative scene was aimed more at
getting his groove back, than in pursuit of
commercial success.
Even as Bowies music started to pass out of youth
culture, as a father and forty-something he seemed
to have a more profound understanding of it. In
1971, hed predicted a post-sexual society,
throwing together a youth manifesto that was, in
retrospect, half-baked. In the 1990s, many of his
pronouncements about art provoked sniffiness,
with adjectives like portentous being directed at
him by interviewers such as British writer Chris
Roberts. Yet in retrospect, Roberts realised the
insight behind some apparently throwaway
comments. When the two met in 1995, Bowie

predicted a non-linear society, telling him, I

think that we as a culture embrace confusion.
Were happy to recombine information, we take
event horizons incredibly fast. The generations
and I can use that plurally now underneath me
have an ability to scan information much quicker
than my lot, and dont necessarily look for the
depth that maybe we would.
In a couple of sentences, hed summed up how
the information society was starting to change,
anticipating how people would consume media
over the forthcoming decades. Within that
interpretation though, there was the unmistakable
implication that in the coming years, the cultural
impact of a single pop star, however famous,
would be limited. The manifesto was becoming
more modest.
The impact of Outside, too, was limited, and not
just for reasons of cultural change; the narrative
segments, in particular, would become unbearably
irritating on repeated listening, and in subsequent
years the album would fall out of favour. Yet two
decades later, when albums are indeed being

consumed in non-linear fashion, shuffled on iTunes

with the irritating portions removed, Outside is
being seen in a different light, according to pianist
Mike Garson, who has lately become convinced
that the album is a career highlight. I remember
thinking, This is quite a special album because it
was a little far out. Maybe people wouldnt get it
for a long time but recently Ive had a lot of calls
and emails I have a feeling that people are
starting to get it.
When Outside was being recorded, Bowie had
played down his affinity with younger bands like
Nine Inch Nails, saying that his major influence
was the Swiss industrialists The Young Gods. But
when it came time to promote Outside on the road,
Bowie chose to explicitly link himself with NIN
front man Trent Reznor, touring on a joint bill in a
deliberately challenging move which left him open
to trend-hopping jibes and even hostile reactions.
Bowies band now sported a new rhythm
section of drummer Zachary Alford and bassist
Gail Ann Dorsey, with George Simms, last seen on
the Serious Moonlight tour, on backing vocals;

Peter Schwartz was selected as musical director

so David wouldnt have a favourite child among
Carlos, Reeves or Garson: all previous
incumbents. The tour opened on 14 September,
1995, in Hartford, Connecticut, winding up in LA
in late October. Nine Inch Nails set included
Bowies Scary Monsters and Subterraneans;
Bowie joined them for Reptile and Hurt.
Mike Garson: I thought that was a brilliant
move. We were standing on the side of the stage
every night and watched them play their set. I was
intrigued. In the middle of the show, when Nine
Inch Nails were going off, our band would come
on, David would sing Hurt and Trent Reznor
would sing on the David Bowie song and it was
amazing.
For Reznor, the experience was thrilling, but
intimidating. Sometimes hed find himself hoping
that Bowie wouldnt be there when he walked into
the dressing room, so he wouldnt have to talk to
him. Not that I didnt like him. But I felt like I had
to impress him. I had to impress his band. I
couldnt just let my hair down.

Reeves remembers: It was a cool idea but also

hard work because we would have to front-load
our set with the up stuff because wed be coming
off the Nine Inch Nails encore. Also we did a meld
where Carlos and I would join Nine Inch Nails. It
was a tough one; some of the Nails crowd would
leave when we came on, then our crowd would
come in from the lobby. It made us work really
hard in a good way.
In November, the band hit the UK, with
Morrissey replacing NIN. The UK leg started with
a four-night run at Wembley. The tour was a prime
example of an older artist refusing to play his
greatest hits although Look Back in Anger,
Scary Monsters and Teenage Wildlife were all
delivered in ruthlessly efficient versions and met
with the predictable response. If there were any
Phil Collins fans in the audience, taking the stage
to Philip Glasss Some Air and opening with
The Motel was an admirably effective method of
dispersing them. Morrissey left the UK tour after
the first ten dates, taking offence at Bowies
suggestion their sets should overlap, like they had

done on his American tour. Morrissey was not as

accommodating as Trent Reznor of a move which
deprives people of saying goodbye to me, he
asserted later, adding for good measure, Hes a
business, you know. Hes not really a person.
On 19 February, 1996, as the European leg of
the tour came to a close, there was a rather more
fulsome tribute from Tony Blair, Labour Party
leader, who hailed David as an innovator as he
presented him with a Brit award for Lifetime
Achievement. The future world statesman was six
years younger than David, who later commented
hed only turned up at the awards ceremony to
perform his current single, Hallo Spaceboy if
so, the tactic worked, for the Pet Shop Boys remix
of the song entered the UK charts a fortnight later
at number twelve.
The success of Hallo Spaceboy was a
welcome vindication in a year in which Davids
public, and the critics, gave his new material a
generally grudging reception. His own enthusiasm,
though, was fired up to a new peak, for after a
short break in the spring the band stripped down

to Gabrels, Garson, Alford and Gail Ann Dorsey,

whose vocals on a superb version of Under
Pressure were now a staple of the set returned
to Europe for festival dates in June and July. It was
just a couple of days after the band had returned
home that David called Gabrels to tell him hed
booked Philip Glasss studio in New York, for a
fortnight later.
That summer was the end of Outside and
beginning of Earthling, says Gabrels. I had
written about six tracks, more like electronic stuff,
on my laptop. I was trying to write without guitar
at that point because wed been crossing paths
with bands like Underworld and The Prodigy. The
sessions would be the most intense and untroubled
of Davids 1990s: the band called the studio The
Clubhouse, and visitors included David Lynch and
Lou Reed, with whom David had now made his
peace. Inspired by the sounds theyd heard over the
summer Bowie was an Underworld fan, Gabrels
favoured The Prodigy the team made a conscious
decision to abandon tradition, says the guitarist. I
felt everybody was looking around them,

musically, and thought, Fuck, its the end of the

millennium and were still playing like were in
The Rolling Stones. Weve got to get on this
otherwise people are gonna look back at us and
say we were lame.
Rather than playing conventional electric guitar,
Gabrels used a Roland processor, which digitally
modelled different guitar sounds; the entire album
was recorded on hard disk, rather than tape,
allowing vocals or instruments to be cut and pasted
within a song. As they excitedly explored this new
world, their guide was Mark Plati, whod been
working at Looking Glass Studios since 1991.
Tutored in the bass guitar by Duke Ellingtons
nephew William at Indiana University, Plati
moved to New York in 1987 and engineered,
programmed and played at Arthur Bakers
Shakedown Studios while also filling the same
role for superstar DJ Junior Vasquez. Plati had
helped Gabrels craft the samples used for the
summer dates, and over the three weeks in which
they made the album, he became its co-producer,
making music out of bits of sonic junk old

tracks or samples that he and Reeves found around

the studio.
Working with Brian Eno, David had gone
through complex psychological techniques to
bypass writers block; for Earthling, simply using
a computer did much the same thing. The songs
arrived quickly: lyrics assembled on Post-It notes,
decisions made on the fly, vocals recorded first or
second take, notably Little Wonder, where they
ended up using the original guide vocal.
Approaching his fifties, Davids voice and writing
sounded fresh, revitalised there were many
echoes of his youth, a Tony Newley inflection in
Little Wonder, or a trace of Letter to Hermione
in Dead Man Walking, which also featured the
simple two-note guitar riff Jimmy Page had shown
him at IBC studios with The Manish Boys, three
decades earlier.
If it came easy, though, Earthling didnt stay the
course. By its release in January 1997, drum n
bass, and Bowies main obsession, Underworld,
were both mainstream phenomena; although many
reviews of the time praised the rejuvenated

songwriting, the album was doomed to be

consigned to history as another exercise in
apparent bandwagon-jumping. Even the title,
Earthling, seemed crassly self-referential, while
the Alexander McQueen Union Jack frock coat
looked like an attempt to cash in on Britpop, which
was the talk of the spring. Yet despite the air of
dad at the disco, the passion was real, and inspired
Bowie and Gabrels to sneak to events like that
summers Phoenix Festival, playing as the Tao
Jones Index before their main set.
When David celebrated his fiftieth birthday at a
packed Madison Square Garden on 8 January,
1997, the line-up seemed carefully chosen to
emphasise the birthday boys cutting-edge
credentials. Fans like the Smashing Pumpkins, The
Cures Robert Smith, Black Francis from The
Pixies and the Foo Fighters Dave Grohl were
there to duet on better-known songs, but his own
set was dominated by material from his last two
albums; Lou Reed the King of New York, as
David fulsomely introduced him was the only

contemporary, joining him for Queen Bitch and

Waiting for the Man. Only towards the end, after
crowd and band had sung him Happy Birthday, did
he run through Under Pressure and Heroes and
then closed the evening with a beautifully simple
Space Oddity.
It was a powerful ceremony, a convincing
testament to his musical impact; but over the same
period that the exacting preparations for the show
had been going on, a more intimate package was
being assembled. For months before, Iman had
been calling up friends some of whom hadnt
seen David for years to ask them to contribute an
artwork to be bound into a book, each contribution
marking a moment of their life with this supposedly
cold, calculating individual. The work, a
collection of drawings and writing, was supremely
moving, according to those who have seen it, an
unaffected tribute to a man who is simply, as
boyhood friend Geoff MacCormack puts it, very
funny a good mate. Friends from Bromley,
Berlin and New York contributed Iman charmed
each of them, discovering new stories about her

husband. Only Iggy, according to friends, didnt

contribute.
For many of Davids peers, hitting the age of
fifty was a dark moment; a few, like Keith
Richards, relished emulating heroes like John Lee
Hooker and playing long into the good night. For
Iggy, just three months younger than David, his
fiftieth year on the planet was a time to split with
his wife Suchi and embark on a crazed affair with
an Argentinian girl, who inspired his crisis-ridden
Avenue B album. David, though, seemed idyllically
happy with Iman, telling friends and even people
he bumped into casually on a plane or in an
airport shuttle how getting married was the best
thing that ever happened to him: the part of him that
was utterly conventional seemed to have gained
dominance.
One gleaming signpost of this conventionality
were the perfect white teeth he now sported. The
disappearance of his slightly crooked, overlapping
fangs in favour of even, Hollywood-style crowns
would later become the subject of a hilariously
sleazy British TV show, Celebrity Surgery,

featuring several Bowie acolytes, all of whom

thought they were contributing to a conventional
documentary. The snippet is now a YouTube
classic, studded with poignant comments from
fans, mourning the departure of his iconic English
gnashers. The teeth completed a style makeover
that also included a small, alternative-rock goatee
and the body art applied in Kyoto in 1992, by a
tattooist popular with the organised crime
syndicate, the Yakuza: a figure riding a dolphin,
overlaid with a Japanese serenity prayer and
Imans name in Japanese Kanji characters, on his
left calf. (Iman reciprocated with a Bowie knife
above her right ankle.)
There was something about Davids wellgroomed, alternative appearance that looked
distinctly airbrushed and American: the product of
spending more time with New Yorks fashion and
music crowd. (Iman disliked the Lausanne house,
which the couple put up for sale the following
year.) The couple loved the city, and in the
following years could often be seen huddled, deep
in conversation, in cafs nearby their condo at 708,

Broadway. Still, he remained distinctly British, for

Iman brought out his playful, funny side, and loved
the ever-present dry humour. Many a New York
waiter would be caught out by his little jokes,
handing him a hot rolled towel before he ordered,
only for Bowie to look at it quizzically and ask, Is
it dead? Even the occasional toot of cocaine was
consigned to the past; now he rarely drank to
excess, and while he cut a cool rug in his frock
coat for that summers tour, he was content to
leave Reeves Gabrels to check out the dance
culture with which hed aligned himself: He
couldnt really go to raves nor was he inclined
to, being, at that point, sober for a long time.
Gabrels and Bowie had as close a musical
relationship as any of those between Bowie and a
fellow musician, all the more complex because the
guitarist was from a younger generation, someone
whod grown up on Bowies music. Gabrels
would teeter between waves of euphoria at
working with a childhood hero, and frustration at
dealing with Bowies business organisation and
niggles about percentage breakdowns on

songwriting credits, which seemed to crop up

around that time. Many of Bowies musicians cite
him as among their best employers Im his
biggest fan, in that respect, says Carlos Alomar
but others found dealing with Isolar consistently
unpleasant. Bowies management gave some
collaborators, like Erdal Kizilcay, the impression
he should take the percentage on offer and count
himself lucky. The Bowie camp had a point after
all, any musician working with David was
practically guaranteed an overnight transformation
of their financial fortunes but such arguments
were especially hard to stomach in the late
nineties, at a time when David was gaining new
fame, not for music, but for the money he was fast
accumulating.
Bowie Bonds, the controversial means by which
David raised 55 million dollars against revenues
from his back catalogue, would cause a sensation
within the music industry. The bonds securities
issued against Bowies future royalties for the next
ten years would also make a star of David

Pullman. The man most associated with the Bowie

Bond, Pullman would, at age thirty-nine, be named
as one of Time magazines 100 Innovators, and go
on to package similar deals for other musicians.
Soon he was being celebrated in profiles across
the worlds press, while the most convincing
testament to the fame of the bond phenomenon
arrived in 2001, in the shape of a thriller,
Something Wild, in which novelist Linda Davies
wove a complex plot around the issue of Bowie
Bonds; Lindas book gives readers a look at how
exciting this industry can be, gushed Pullman, in a
press release around its launch.

Yal Brandeis Perry

With producer Hugh Padgham (centre, in
glasses), at Le Studio, Marin Heights,
near Montreal, to record Tonight,
Davids move into white reggae just as
the smart money was moving out.

Kevin Armstrong
Absolute Beginners: Bowie making his
last great single of the 1980s at West

Side Studios, June, 1985, written and

arranged in a whirlwind with a new
young band. When the session was
finished he thanked them for doing him a
favour.

Kevin Armstrong
Recording Dancing in the Street with

Mick Jagger, Kevin Armstrong (centre)

and singer Helena Springs. Bowie was
relaxed, Mick more vocal and mouthy,
remembers one musician.

Kevin Armstrong

A quick cigarette with Freddie Mercury,

backstage at Live Aid. Bowie looked
after his nervous band like a mother hen
during the day, devoting himself to the
cause rather than his career.

Bellia/Dalle/Retna

Eduard Meyer
Famously ludicrous, the Glass Spider
tour marked the point at which Bowie
(here flanked by Peter Frampton and
Erdal Kizilcay) moved from being a
relaxed delegator to a nervous control
freak. Still, the Berlin show, on 6 June,
1987, was a triumph, sparking riots in
East Berlin, while U2 would later lift
some of Bowies staging ideas. Right, he
visits Hansas Edu Meyer before the
Berlin show.

Kevin Armstrong
Among friends: with girlfriend Melissa
Hurley and new guitarist and confidant
Reeves Gabrels, Compass Point,
Nassau, late 1988, finalising Tin
Machines debut album.

Ebet Roberts/ Getty Images

It never really gelled it was a battle.
Tin Machine, February, 1989, with
Reeves Gabrels (right) and the
irrepressible Sales brothers Tony on
bass, Hunt on drums.

Ron Galella/ WireImage

I have never been so happy. Bowie met
Iman Abdul Majid on 14 October, 1990.
He later mentioned that he started
thinking of baby names that first evening.

Kevin Mazur/WireImage
A modest party, with only 17,000 guests,
to celebrate David Bowies fiftieth
birthday, 9 January, 1997, at Madison
Square Gardens; the music drew mainly
on Earthling, the image augmented

with refurbished, all-American dental

work was state-of-the-art MTV.

Toby Melville/PA
He came back dressed in Hunky Dory
mode and played a full set of hits, every
one was a winner. Taking Glastonbury

by storm, June, 2000, with a band which

included old hand Earl Slick, David
Bowie finally seemed reconciled with
his own past.

Brian Rasic/Rex Features

David, in a kimono with tiny Japanese

slippers on his tiny feet greets Bono
and Eno backstage at Londons Royal
Festival Hall after his recreation of Low,
June, 2002.

Startraks Photo/Rex Features

A mature singer, like Tony Bennett or
Frank Sinatra. A nervous Bowie returns
after his heart attack, 8 September, 2005.
The bandages and bruising signalled
his identification with the battered state
of New Orleans; his voice was now
grainy and world-weary, too.

WireImage

It was an unusual relationship. A rare

public appearance in 2009, this time
playing support to director son Duncan
for Moons appearance at the Tribeca
Film Festival, NYC, April, 2009.

L. Cohen/ WireImage
Well see whats meant to be. David
Bowies last tour, Los Angeles, 2003. Its
final curtailment formed a de facto
Houdini Escape a rationale for the
retirement of which hed long fantasised.

Bowie banked $55 million from the deal 39

million at 1997 sterling rates some of which was
reportedly used to pay British taxes. However,
David wanted the money for quite another reason:
to buy back his own music.
When David had first negotiated his split from
Tony Defries in March, 1975, his ex-manager
retained a percentage of all the music David
recorded, right through to 1982. This percentage
was on a sliding scale reportedly a full 50 per
cent of Bowies share on the pre-1975 releases,
and less thereafter but the money was due in
perpetuity. Defries retained co-ownership of the
masters and even retained the right, he claimed,
to issue further Bowie recordings; a right he
exploited from the early nineties, with the release
of the Santa Monica 72 live album in 1994, plus
other albums based on BBC and Astronettes
sessions. By the mid-nineties, Isolar opened
negotiations with their predecessor for Bowie to
finally buy out his rights. The talks, according to
Defries friends, were amicable: Davids people
told Defries people he wanted the assets to pass

on to his children. None of the parties involved

has ever confirmed how much of Davids $55
million went to Defries, but some of those
peripherally involved suggest it was at least half.
If so, Tony Defries made over $27 million; an
impressive return for the 500,000 it had cost him
to buy Bowies masters from Laurence Myers,
back in the summer of 1972.
Over subsequent years, the notion of Bowie
Bonds would be raised again and again, often with
the implication that David, like Mick Jagger, was
obsessed with money: a lower-middle-class boy
wanting to make up for childhood austerity. Few
commented on the fact that, at the age of fifty, he
was paying tens of millions to reclaim his own
lifes work. Following the transaction, Tony
Defries bought an impressive estate in Virginia and
on top of his considerable existing assets now
had tens of millions to invest, a practice in which
hed always been an expert. David had purchased
his own past.
If the motivations for Bowie seeking another $55

million were misunderstood, the furore signalled a

period when his name was invariably connected
with commerce. The implications of Bowie Bonds
were closely followed within the financial
industry, although the gloss was taken off them by a
series of lawsuits between Pullman and various
other parties, arguing over who had invented the
bonds. The final verdict indicated that the
inspiration for the bonds came not from financial
wiz-kid David Pullman, but from Davids own
business manager, Bill Zysblat. The controversy
around the issue would never subside. Lamont
Dozier, the acclaimed Motown songwriter, would
later sue the advisers who worked on his own
bond issue; in the wake of EMIs financial
problems, Bowie Bonds were downgraded by
Moodys, the leading credit ratings agency, to one
notch above junk grade in 2004.
Since the days when he had kept a close eye on
finances on the Serious Moonlight tour, Bill
Zysblat who also worked for the Stones had
become Davids key adviser. In the wake of the
excitement generated by the Bowie Bonds, Zysblat

would also plan a Bowie Bank an idea that was

eventually dropped after problems with the bank
chosen to operate the scheme and, in the summer
of 1998, announce that he was going to create an
internet provider called BowieNet.
Over the past few years, David had become as
fired up by the internet as he was by art and music:
He was right at the forefront, and it made sense he
would be, says Thomas Dolby, Bowies Live Aid
keyboard player. Dolby had moved to Americas
West Coast to launch an internet start-up company,
and Bowie had shared his excitement with him. It
was a hedonistic thing of being in the moment, of
getting a thrill, a rush out of what he was
experiencing. Dolby had lived through a similar
arc, of seeing contemporaries like David Byrne
progress from hanging out at the Mudd Club to
exploring the medium of video. These were the
lightning rods for creativity. And he was very fired
up what he was seeing was a return to a grass
roots movement. He could have a ringside seat,
and be in control, do spontaneous things and get
instant feedback.

Bowies life would be mapped out online for at

least the next decade; yet his influence went
beyond his own site, or his own music. According
to some industry insiders, he was mapping out the
very future of the world wide web. Technology
writer John Naughton later cited Bowie as a
leading futurologist, the originator of some of the
most perceptive observations anyones ever made
about our networked world. In the late nineties,
Bowie saw the webs potential for building new
communities; yet he also spotted the long-term
implications for copyright, predicting how
authorship and intellectual property would become
endangered. Most presciently, in 2002 he
suggested that music is going to become like
running water or electricity, anticipating the rise
of streaming services like Spotify. Bowie would
always stop short of describing himself as any kind
of visionary his opinions on the evolution of
modern culture were usually confined to
promotional interviews. But his perceptiveness
inspired Naughton to comment, in 2010, If you
want to know the future, ask a musician.

By January 1998, David was promoting the

launch of his own websites, davidbowie.com and
bowieart.com, and on 1 September an internet
provider, BowieNet (subscription fee $19.95 per
month). One of the staff at Outside, his PR
company, remembers that the launch was one of
the most stressful things I can remember, there
would be webcasts with him, Boy George,
Visconti and he absolutely loved it. The
obsession David would also drop in on his own
chatrooms; his handle sailor was also
recreational; hed spend hours trawling the world
wide web, or looking for bargains on eBay.
Over the same year that the Bowie brand was
launched online, the man himself was launched as
an independent digital entity, too. Towards the end
of 1998, David called Reeves Gabrels over to
London to join him and Iman at a meeting with a
computer game company, Eidos. The developer
needed not only a soundtrack, They wanted
David, Iman and me to be a character in a game,
says Gabrels. So we started talking about how to
do it, set up in a hotel room and started writing.

The resultant game, Omikron, was a cult classic,

albeit no mainstream success, but Survive, the
main song Bowie and Gabrels crafted for the
game, was a gem, simple and unaffected, almost
Scary Monsters in vibe, without any of the overcomplexity and over-thinking that otherwise
seemed synonymous with nineties Bowie.
During that most multimedia of years, it was
perhaps fitting that a meeting which would have a
profound effect on his future work was hatched as
a result of a kids cartoon. David had been asked
to contribute a song to the Rugrats movie (also
featuring Iggy), and called Tony Visconti to
produce the vaguely retro song, Safe. As he took
the call, Viscontis eyes welled up. I hadnt
realised how much I missed him. Sadly, the song
wouldnt make the film, for the scene featuring it
was cut. But their relationship had been rekindled.
As one friendship was being patched up, another
was coming to its term. The Omikron project
expanded into a full-blown album, first called The
Dreamer, later renamed Hours, which was started
in Bermuda, where David and Iman now had a

holiday home. In search of a low-key, emotional

feel, Bowie and Reeves reverted to conventional
one-on-one songwriting methods. According to
Reeves, hed originally intended two of the songs,
The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell and
Survive, for his own solo album. Throughout, his
guitar work was tasteful, less exhibitionist than
before: Im not sort of Jackson Pollocking my way
through it, its more Norman Rockwell.
After the aggression and exuberance of its
predecessors, Hours was widely interpreted as a
reflection on mortality. There is a distinct worldweariness about songs such as Thursdays Child,
exacerbated by Davids Nick Cave-influenced
vocal; at other points, particularly The Dreamers,
Scott Walker comes to the fore, in what is one of
Davids more vocally self-effacing albums. The
instrumentation, too, was conventional, predictable
at times, in what seemed to be a genre-free
album, as if in conscious over-reaction to its
predecessor. The best songs, notably Seven, and
Thursdays Child, were potential masterpieces,
but their predictable, occasionally plodding

arrangements suggested that Davids assured

instinct for picking the right setting had deserted
him. As if to confirm this, the sleeve, always an
intrinsic part of the appeal of Bowie albums, was a
mess: despite being crafted by noted San Francisco
collagist Rex Ray, it was a hammy mix of designer
clutter and mawkishness, with its photo of the
long-haired Bowie cradling his short-haired alterego, as if in a deposition from the cross.
For most listeners, the autumnal mood was taken
as Bowie reflecting on his life. In his talks with
Reeves, David told him, It was autobiographical
but it wasnt his biography, it was someone close
to him. There was some discussion about whether
he was writing from my point of view. I dont
know. The end was nigh. I knew I needed to go, it
just took a long time to figure out how.
Gabrels had helped lead Bowie out of the
creative cul-de-sac of the late eighties, but both
parties sensed it was time to move on. Mark Plati,
the computer wizard behind Earthling, had now
moved into a more conventional role as bassist, a
change essentially initiated by Reeves. Gabrels

had thus prepared his own replacement. There was

no falling out, says the guitarist: I was basically
burning out. A lot of it didnt have to do with
David as much as with time away from home, time
on the road and just dealing with some of the
people around him. I thought it was amicable.
In his later years, David was sometimes
remarkably gracious about his previous
collaborators; this was certainly the case with
Reeves, to whom David would often publicly
express his gratitude. Still, the pair soon fell out of
touch: I think it got misinterpreted over time
Coco got in there after I left, says Reeves. I was
no saint either at the end, but my crimes were
entirely personal. I was trying to make my way
home at that point literally! I felt like if I had
stayed I was going to become everything I disliked
in musicians I had known bitter and twisted or
I was gonna die because I would be so miserable I
would just drug myself to death. I just knew I was
done with that. There were also personal
complications because I was having a child with
Davids wardrobe mistress. That played into their

hands as a source of shit-stirring. Gabrels last

appearance with Bowie would be at the VH1
Storytellers performance, filmed in August 1999.
(It was a good, slightly nostalgic show, with
Bowie sharing some hilarious anecdotes, such as
the time when, in Ziggy guise, he discovered he
was expected to use the dressing-room sink as a
urinal. My dear man, I cant piss in the sink! he
protested. Son, the promoter replied, if its good
enough for Shirley Bassey, its good enough for
you.)
While Hours was undistinguished, its marketing
was world-class. The build-up to its 4 October
release featured a cyber song contest, offering
fans the chance to contribute four lines of lyric to
one song. Bowies website unveiled the album
cover one section at a time, strip-tease style, while
announcing the album would be available as a
download before its CD release: another first for
an established artist. And if this wasnt sufficient
media saturation, in the run-up to release, Heroes
blared out regularly from British TV screens in a
8.5 million campaign for CGU Insurance, which,

the ad agency announced, focuses on the consumer

as hero for taking responsibility for the financial
future. The promotion, and the fans genuine
affection for the more traditional, unvarnished
Bowie, helped the album to number five in the UK
charts. American sales were disappointing,
however; at number forty-seven it was his worst
solo chart performance since Ziggy Stardust.
But as the century ebbed to its close, there was
welcome vindication from the Sun, whose readers
voted him the biggest star of the twentieth century,
beating Michael Jackson and Liam Gallagher; in a
Q magazine poll of the Greatest Star of the
Century, he pipped Madonna to come sixth, after
Lennon, McCartney, Cobain, Dylan and Elvis. On
Christmas Eve that year, he spent two and a half
hours chatting with 19,000 fans on an intermittent
internet feed, thanking the kids who mentioned
their parents thought him a bad influence,
promising new sessions with Tony Visconti,
throwing in a good joke every line or two,
mentioning his son was standing by with a
saucepan and explaining that the Christmas tree

had been decorated, but our balls keep tending to

fall off. It had been a good half-century.
The fresh new decade was a good one, too. David
and Iman had been trying for a child since the late
nineties, resorting to IVF, Iman said later, and
undergoing two unsuccessful bouts before
conceiving naturally. The pair announced Imans
pregnancy on 13 February, 2000, monopolising
headlines worldwide. (The competition for
cheesiest headline was won by music365.com,
whose story read Nappy Ch-ch-changes .)
Iman later told Jet magazine shed used an old
African technique to get pregnant; holding a
borrowed baby, kindly supplied by Christie
Brinkley, during a Vogue shoot the previous
September.
Of all the regrets that David ever voiced in
public, the fact that his son had had such an
irregular upbringing was the one he mentioned
most often. After leaving Gordonstoun, Joey had
worked briefly with handicapped kids in
Switzerland, and at the Jim Henson puppet

workshop a connection hed made during his

dads work on Labyrinth before winning a
scholarship to the College of Wooster in Ohio to
study Philosophy. Once there, he started using his
given first name, Duncan. In 1999, David had
suggested Duncan accompany him to the shoot for
Tony Scotts TV series of The Hunger; Scott
became a mentor to Duncan, inspiring a love affair
with cinema. In February 2000, the Daily Mail
trumpeted the news that the quiet and polite
Duncan had enrolled at Covent Gardens
International Film School.
From the beginning of 2000, David knew there
would be parallels with the summer that Duncan
had been born, for Glastonbury organiser Michael
Eavis had called before Christmas, asking him to
return to the festival, twenty-nine years after his
first appearance there. The spring was dominated
by the preparations, with Earl Slick returning to the
fold, joining Plati, Gail Ann Dorsey, drummer
Sterling Campbell and backing singers Holly
Palmer and Emm Grynner. There were three
warm-up shows in New York, one of which was

cancelled, as his voice gave out. Perhaps for that

reason, David was conspicuously nervous before
his Sunday night slot at the festival, on 25 June.
BBC executive producer Mark Cooper oversaw
the live coverage, and remembers, He took the
place by storm. He came back dressed in Hunky
Dory mode and played a set full of hits, every one
was a winner. The performance was fabulous;
only one factor stopped the set being the live
broadcast of the year: They [Davids
management] told us they would only let us
broadcast six songs. I wept. It was such a stonking
set, he had the whole crowd eating out of his hand.
And it was painful to come off it. Rather like
musicians who describe encounters where David
played the Angel and Coco played the Devil, the
BBC executives were struck by the contrast
between Davids cheery demeanour and the
difficult, almost miserly attitude of his organisation
when it came to broadcasting the show. I always
thought of Bowie as someone good at hoarding his
past, says one of them, paying it out a bit at a
time. Like Scrooge. Cooper, meanwhile, saw the

performance as a life-changing event, which

should have been shared more widely: An artist
can be reborn with a performance like that, get
another ten years in their career. Hes earned the
right to deliver things on his terms, but I think it
was a mistake. Because this was the moment.
There was another nod to 1971 two days later,
with a show at the BBC Radio Theatre, which
echoed the show at which hed premiered the
newly written Kooks. Then, back in New York,
he started sessions on the sixties-themed album that
hed trailed in the December webcast. Named Toy,
the proposed album was inspired by one of his
first great songs, Let Me Sleep Beside You:
place your ragged doll with all your toys and
things and deeds. With Mark Plati overseeing,
they cut a terrific version, imbued with the spirit of
Mick Wayne, whod played on the BBC version
the Hull guitarist, Ronsons predecessor, had died
in a house fire in June 1994, his work forgotten.
Tony Visconti, whose inspirational arrangement
for the song had marked his debut collaboration
with Bowie, was called in for some of the

sessions, in which David delved deeply into his

own back pages, to re-record Ziggy-era numbers
such as the jewel-like Shadow Man: a nearmasterpiece, this obscure, forgotten work
illustrated the quality and breadth of the song
catalogue hed built up over thirty-five years.
Though theyd been working hard, there was the
most welcome interruption to the sessions on 15
August, 2000, with the birth of Alexandria Zahra
Jones at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. David
and Iman celebrated the event in the now
obligatory cover feature in Hello!, sharing with the
public their bliss, their fantasies of later having a
boy they could name Stenton, after Davids father,
and the universal frustration with builders, whose
delays prevented their move to their bigger, new
apartment in Chelsea, New York, in time for the
birth. Iman mentioned that David was doing his
share of nappy changes for Alexandria her name
inspired by the ancient Greco-Egyptian seat of
culture. The notion of a multimedia superstar
dealing with such down-to-earth routines was
heart-warming, but apparently the novelty wore

off, for three years later, in bloke-ish mode, he

announced, I dont do nappies.
A year after Alexandrias birth, David was still
describing his main job as daddyfying, his
excitement at the new experience just as allconsuming as the obsessions of his youth. His work
schedule was light; there was a short break filming
a hilarious, self-parodic cameo for Ben Stillers
film Zoolander, plus more frustrating weeks spent
wrestling with problems over the completed Toy
album in June David mentioned scheduling
conflicts with EMI/Virgin. In reality, this was a
terminal falling-out, triggered by managerial
conflicts within the company. He was unconcerned
by the hassles, as far as anyone could tell; instead,
he seemed to have settled in to life in New York.
The public perception was of him as a culture buff,
always visiting the ballet or a new exhibition, or
hanging out with local musos like Moby or Lou
Reed, all of which he did. But he was just as happy
Googling randomly in the bunker his computer
and work room waking up at 6 a.m. and dealing
with emails before taking Lexi for a walk around

SoHo or Greenwich Village in her buggy, or sitting

chatting to Iman over a bowl of pasta by a
restaurant window, the two of them smiling
graciously if they happened to be interrupted by a
fan.
In his first few years as a New Yorker, he still
considered moving back London; it was a part of
who he was. But over the next couple of years he
came to detest British celebrity culture, the
prospect of having to endure having a camera lens
stuck in either my face or my wife and childs face
every morning. He had reverted to much the same
sentiments hed expressed in 1980, the feeling that
New York was the perfect place to wander, seek
out interesting book or antique shops, pick up the
urban buzz without being hassled. Only once did he
venture out publicly that spring, to Carnegie Hall
for the Tibet House Benefit on 26 February, 2001.
Together on-stage for the first time since The
Hype, he and Tony Visconti played an
extraordinary version of Silly Boy Blue. When
theyd recorded it together in December 1966, it
had disappeared without trace, prompting thoughts

of giving up music; now the pair were backed by

Philip Glass on piano and Moby on guitar, and led
the enraptured crowd in a chant of Chime chime
chime in tribute to the monk David had gone to
see at the Tibet Centre.
The sense that, as a new father, David was
becoming reconciled to his own past deepened in
the aftermath of his mothers death. Margaret Mary
Jones passing was announced on 2 April, and for
David had come out of the blue. Several faces
from his youth were at the funeral, including Ken
Pitt and Pat Antoniou, the aunt who had so publicly
accused David of callousness to his half-brother,
prolonging the feuds that had blighted the Burns
family for half a century. When David saw her, he
walked straight over, threw his arms around her,
says Ken Pitt, the one man who had stayed in touch
with all the various disconnected branches of the
family. He was absolutely wonderful.
A ghost had been laid to rest, but others would
remain. On 11 May, Freddie Buretti died of cancer
in Paris. David had kept nearly all the costumes
Freddie had made for him. And the problems with

Toy deepened during the summer; the record would

be a casualty of Mariah Careys legendarily
disastrous album, Glitter, which sold so badly that
Virgin were forced to pay a reported $19 million
to terminate her contract early; Nancy Berry, who
had signed Bowie as well as Carey, was fired. But
even before the albums fate was sealed, David
was planning its replacement. In June, he came to
stay with Tony Visconti and his new girlfriend at
their humble, draughty, wooden, three-storey
apartment in suburban West Nyack, New York.
The pair worked on songs together in Tonys loft,
just as they had in the Haddon Hall basement, only
this time they would cut and paste ideas using Pro
Tools software, rather than Mark Pritchetts
Revox. On their second day, Tony took David to
see Allaire, a beautiful wood-lined recording
studio set in the Catskill Mountains: it felt like a
finely crafted Edwardian yacht, with panoramic
views over the reservoir that quenches New York
City. The moment David stepped in the room, he
said later, I knew exactly what lyrics I was to
write although I didnt yet know what the words

themselves were.
When they started recording, David brought his
little family, who stayed in a tiny house in the
grounds some of the time, and there he remained,
until the album was essentially finished. One
morning, he got up around five, as was his habit,
looked out of the windows and saw two deer
grazing below the field, in the fresh light of the
rising sun. In the distance a car was driving slowly
past the reservoir, and then words started
streaming out of him and tears ran down his face.
The song was Heathen: I didnt like writing it.
There was something so ominous and final about
it. The lyrics read as if taking leave of a lover; but
the object he addresses is life.
The song was indeed bleak, but throughout the
Heathen album, there is a visceral connection with
the world David saw around him, and an almost
loving engagement with his craft. (Later, hed
enumerate all the instruments he played in the
sessions, including his Stylophone and Brian Enos
old EMS synth.)
For the past two decades, Bowie had wrestled

with that worry about whether, in his later years,

he could ever contribute so aggressively again. In
the relaxed, almost spiritual atmosphere of Allaire,
he had found his answer, for a renewed confidence
and passion pervades each of the songs. There was
a luminous simplicity about most of the material
that evoked Hunky Dory; but where Hunky Dory
speaks of rebirth, of the shiny and new, Heathen
displays a hard-won confidence in a life thats
been well lived, like beautifully worn leather the
quirky, almost baby voice on A Better Future;
drifting, dark, drum loops on The Angels Have
Gone; impassioned singing, reminiscent of
Heroes, on Slow Burn. Perhaps there wasnt
the visceral thrill of the twenty- and thirtysomething Bowie, but there was nonetheless the
sense that this was a classic album, one that didnt
suffer by comparison with Scary Monsters.
Many of the reviews of the album were coloured
by the knowledge that Bowie and Visconti were
still out in the Catskills on 9/11; David was talking
to Iman, who was back in the apartment, on the
phone as she saw the second plane hit. When

David returned to Manhattan, there was an

ominous gap in the familiar view from the kitchen
window; Iman realised that many of the men who
used to greet her and Lexi as she wheeled the
buggy by the local Fire Department station a
couple of blocks away were probably dead. It
would cement the familys relationship with the
city; David headlined Octobers Concert for New
York and would talk no more of moving back to
London. But for all the fear and anxiety David
sensed in the air, convinced there would be a
further attack, he was infectiously optimistic,
recounting Lexis babywords verbatim to friends,
reading her books, telling those around him how
lucky he was.
The sense of event around the release of
Heathen in June 2002 was palpable the presence
of Tony Visconti seemed to fire up fans far more
than an internet marketing campaign. The
excitement was stoked up by a show at New
Yorks Roseland Ballroom, and then his
appearance at the culmination of his own
Meltdown Season at Londons Royal Festival

Hall. The series had been controversial or rather

disappointingly unadventurous, according to the
London Evening Standard for his involvement as
curator was patchy, with his attention diverted by
negotiations with new record company Sony. Yet
the closing night was a sensation, mostly for the
performance of Low, in its entirety, followed by
Heathen. Mark Plati had prepared by listening
through the original Hansa and Chteau
multitracks: massive, long-obsolete reels of twoinch tape, which had to be baked in an oven to stop
them crumbling into dust; he crafted individual
mixes which he gave to each band member, as a
kind of karaoke version of the album. The show
was genuinely overwhelming, people did
recognise the magnitude of the event, says Glenn
Max, who had struggled to put the festival together.
As the band launched into Always Crashing in the
Same Car, the audience took to their feet, and
pretty much stayed there. The only problem with
the show was that by the close of Low, the
audience were drained: It had been so dazzling,
you almost needed a two-hour run around the block

to recover, says Max, but then the band came out

again, David changed from his Thin White Duke
shirt and waistcoat to a white silk suit for a
gripping rendition of Heathen.
When the applause died down, Bono and Brian
Eno were among those queueing for admission to
the tiny dressing room; this event alone was great
theatre David looking spent but cool as a
cucumber, dressed in a kimono, with little
Japanese slippers on his tiny Japanese feet,
remembers Max Glenn. When David introduced
Brian Eno to Mark Plati, he told him, This is the
man responsible for all of this. Thinking Bowie
meant he was the architect of the Queen Elizabeth
Hall, Plati pointed at the ceiling and murmured,
Nice job!
For both the album and the tour that promoted it,
there was a consensus in the coverage: that this
was an artist who, if not at the peak of his own
giddy career, was still producing work that
towered over most of his younger rivals. And with
the fevered activity, he said, Im very confident
and trusting in my abilities right now. The old

sense of having to rush that had driven him through

the 1970s was renewed. Back then, the impetus
came from youthful ambition; now it came from
what seemed an excessive sense of his own
mortality: Ive got to think of myself as the
luckiest guy, he said that summer, Robert Johnson
only had one albums worth of work as his legacy.
After smoking obsessively, trying brand after
brand for forty years, hed managed to cut down to
a minimum now he was a father again.
T he Heathen tour concluded in late October
2002, marked by shows in each of New Yorks
five boroughs, but David was thinking of new
songs even as he settled back into his daily routine
of walks and reading sessions with Lexi, visits to
Iman at the 7th Avenue office of her cosmetics
company, or his three-times-a-week boxing
sessions at a nearby gym.
After a couple of days pre-production in
November, he and Visconti were ready to start
work again in January. This time they recorded in
New York, at Looking Glass, but in a smaller
studio, which gave a more constrained, urban feel

to capture the angst of NYC, says Visconti. He

and David worked closely together, making
decisions quickly; there was a matter-of-factness
about the recording, much of it using Davids
touring band. Mike Garson, like Chuck Hammer
and Dominic Muldowney before him, was struck
by how intuitive their musical relationship was: I
worked with perfect love with Tony Visconti. Hes
an incredible guy.
Throughout his life, David had developed his
unrivalled genius for getting the best out of
musicians; in just two songs, The Loneliest Guy
and Bring Me the Disco King, he seemed to
reach into Garson to inspire something new. The
latter track, with Garsons minimal, milky chords
underpinned by a drum loop saved from Heathen,
was as fine as anything theyd recorded together in
the last thirty years. You promised me the ending
would be clear, David sang, in a voice rendered
cloudy by four decades of Gitanes and Marlboros;
after twenty-eight albums, he was still constructing
songs that were fiercely understated, yet would
yield up new secrets with repeated listens.

From The Spiders onwards, one of the most

frequently voiced accusations about Davids work
was that he exploited his musicians and influences
that he was really a curator, not a creator. But as
Garson attests, he had a practised, effective and
indeed almost mystical ability to inspire them to
create something entirely new: Somehow his
beingness and his essence pulls out the best, says
the pianist. He might give you little guidances but
never says do this or do that. Just by his space I
always tend to play my best stuff, to contribute
every aspect of my playing. I dont think I would
have come up with those solos had he not been
there.
Garson, in his own way, summarises all the
issues of how David conjured up music from his
musicians. In his early days, the word vampiric
was used more than once to describe how he
benefited from other musicians creativity. Yet, in
reality, he rarely took from them he inspired
them, as Garson points out, to summon up ideas
that would never have existed without him. In these
years, David Bowie was always modest about the

achievements to which he laid claim; but he was

demonstrably correct when he told Livewire.com:
To not be modest about it, youll find that with
only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians
that Ive worked with have done their best work by
far with me. I can shine a light on their own
strengths. Get them to a place they would never
have gotten to on their own. This was a bold
claim, but as Garson and others attest, it was true.
He didnt take. He gave.
Tony Visconti thought that David looked tired
when he next saw him. Reality was released, to a
warm response, on 15 September, 2003, and by
October David had embarked on his biggest tour of
the last five years. In retrospect, the portents had
been stacking up for months, but at the time, the
tour was thrilling: We didnt sit on our laurels
at one point we had sixty or seventy songs in our
repertoire, says Garson. He would call things out
from nowhere sometimes and we would just play
them in front of 3,000 people. It was pretty brave.
Yet on 12 November, the Toulouse show was

cancelled as David contracted laryngitis; two days

later, they resumed, only for the first leg of the US
tour to be delayed by a week when he came down
with influenza. Come January he was back on the
road again, but tragedy struck on 6 May, 2004, in
Miami, with the nights performance cancelled
after a lighting engineer fell to his death. Then on
18 June, his outdoor show in Oslo was interrupted
when a female fan throw a lollipop that lodged
momentarily in the socket of his left eye. For a few
moments his composure deserted him as he
demanded to know who had thrown the object
then, relaxing, he warned them, Ive only got one
good eye, you know, before telling them he
planned to retaliate by making the concert extra
long. Five nights later, David cut short his set after
fifteen songs in Prague, complaining of what felt
like a trapped nerve in his shoulder. He played one
more show, at the Hurricane Festival in Scheessel,
Germany, on Saturday 25 June, before collapsing
backstage in agony.
For the next nine days, BowieNet would trail the
message that the tour had been cancelled due to

continuing pain and discomfort from a

trapped/pinched nerve. Only when David was
back in New York, on 8 July, did his US publicist
announce that he had undergone emergency
angioplasty surgery for a blocked artery. Two days
later, press reports quoted a tour insider who
asserted that David had suffered a heart attack
backstage, and had undergone surgery the night of
his collapse: The heart surgery wasnt routine. It
was a lot more serious than anyone is letting on.
Davids friends would later be told that the
procedure involved stents spring-like mesh tubes
fitted inside an artery to keep it open a less
invasive alternative to heart bypass surgery, which
happened to be a speciality of the Klinik St Georg
in Hamburg, where he was rushed after the
Scheessel show.
On 28 July, David was photographed walking
around the streets of New York Citys Chinatown.
Wearing a stetson and a green T-shirt, he shook
hand with well-wishers, then stepped into a health
food shop to stock up on tea and a variety of
ancient Chinese remedies. One year later, Iman

told friends that David was still busy with writing

and recording: Were not retiring people, she
said.

22
The Houdini Mechanism
The thing I remember was a sense of
wanting to escape: to parachute out, to
find a strategy that would give a glorious
exit. That was what he was looking for.
A stunning escape mechanism a
Houdini escape from pop stardom.
Julien Temple
Wasnt he brave? To do what he did?
George Underwood

Aliens are immortal; that was what fans continued

to believe in the months that followed Davids
heart attack, punctuated by tantalising glimpses of

the man in the audience for shows by Gail Ann

Dorsey, Arcade Fire and the occasional red-carpet
event. It was over a year later 8 September, 2005
before David stepped once more into the
limelight, an event fraught with nerves, emotion
and warmth.
The rehearsal for the Cond Nast Fashion Rocks
show, organised in aid of the Hurricane Katrina
victims, was nerve-racking. Bowie had not met up
with Mike Garson, his sole accompanist, until their
rehearsal the afternoon of the performance. When
they ran through the song, various performers and
crew were busy around Radio City Music Hall.
Then, as Garson rippled into the opening chords at
the rehearsal, he realised, Everybody who was
performing that night was listening you could
hear a pin drop. Life on Mars?, the song that had
been gifted to the twenty-three-year-old Bowie on
the bus to Lewisham, sounded radically different
from any previous version.
Garson had first played the song with David on
his New York debut thirty-two years before, but at
the Fashion Rocks performance that evening he

was more nervous than he could ever remember,

his feet and knees shaking as he sat down at the
grand piano and Alicia Keys announced, My good
friend, David Bowie. The pitch of the song had
been shifted down all the way from F to B; the new
key was tricky, unfamiliar, and if I screwed up, it
would almost inevitably make him screw up. There
was no one else to cover up. No safety net.
David was even more tentative; he was out of
practice, almost a little scared: You have a heart
problem, youve got to be wondering to yourself,
Am I gonna drop dead on-stage? says Garson.
Anything could go through the mind youve had
a rough period, you dont know if thats gonna
happen again. Yet for Garson, as Bowie settled
slowly into the song in front of an enthralled
audience, there was something magical about the
moment: the fact that their rendition was on the
edge and vulnerable gave it a new depth. It was
poignant and nostalgic. It was magical one of the
deepest things weve done, with factors that go
beyond the laws of music; rhythm, harmony,
melody and intonation and all that. It was a deeper

thing. Almost more of a spiritual experience.

The sight of David walking up to the mike-stand,
nervously clutching it almost as if for comfort, was
affecting and as the camera panned to show him
wearing high-water pants, showing bare ankles,
with a bandaged wrist and black eye faintly
ludicrous. With the pitch at which David sang
lowered by half an octave, there was a sense of the
changing of the seasons, from spring to fall. The
song had originally been delivered by a young
buck, a snotty challenge to Sinatra. Tonight, even
in the lower key, that glorious octave leap up to
Mars that had launched a career was no longer
effortless and transcendent; it spoke of pain. David
Bowie was not facing down the Chairman of the
Board; he was following in his footsteps. He
came out as a mature singer that night, like Tony
Bennett or Frank Sinatra: someone with presence.
A gentleman in his fifties who was not about to try
and do something that a twenty-year-old would. It
was phenomenal, says Garson.
There were countless resonances in those
moments. The high-water pants, the bandage and

black eye make-up reflected many ludicrous outfits

of the past. Yet its reference to Louisianas
flooded, battered state also reached back to the
aura around New Orleans, where Little Richard
had recorded those first songs that electrified the
boy from Bromley. In the flicker of doubt so
plainly evident as he hit the high note on Mars
or what was once a high note it became obvious
this was a great, profound Bowie performance: the
first in years that boasted the on-the-edge danger
the omnipresent fear that it could have fallen
apart, as Garson puts it that characterised his
career.
Yet it was also the first David Bowie
performance in which the boyish radiance, the
charisma that had so entranced Ken Pitt during
Bowies rendition of a Judy Garland song in 1965,
had plainly faded away. That radiance had become
a platform on which a mediocre musician had built
his acknowledged genius. Now, as he sang the
haunting melody that marked his debut as a great
songwriter, all most people noticed was the
fragility of his voice and the solidity of his frame.

The spectacle of David Bowie, older gentleman,

was one that his fans found hard to contemplate.
Over subsequent days, and months, as still photos
and then videos the kind of view behind the
gilded curtain that would have been unthinkable in
the MainMan era spread around the world wide
web where Bowie fans lived the reactions
ranged from affection and sympathy to horror and
ridicule: Hes a mess, was one of the kinder
opinions. He looks a bit dead,states YouTube
commenter Lindadox, before adding insult to
injury: [and] the hair isnt quite working for him.
Over the next year, occasional flurries of activity
encouraged some observers to liken this quiet
period to the pregnant pause that followed Scary
Monsters. There were more guest appearances:
(She Can) Do That, co-written with trance
pioneer Brian Transeau for the abysmal Top Gunwannabe
movie Stealth, a guest vocal on
Kashmirs The Cynic, plus backing vocals for TV
on the Radio, the Brooklyn band who, throughout
2005 and 2006, would notice his appreciative,

expensively suited presence at the side of the stage

for their every show in NYC. Then in September,
David guested on Courtney Pines Radio 2 show,
and when the saxophonist asked if he was working
on a project, told him, Yeah, Ive started writing
already and er it looks pretty weird, so Im
happy. A few weeks later he signed up to play
Nikolai Tesla, his finest movie role in years, for
Christopher
Nolans The Prestige which
depicted two rival magicians, each obsessed with
staging the most glamorous, shocking disappearing
act.
Still, the next major outing was not until 2006, in
a tribute to Britains most celebrated, most
reclusive rock casualty, Syd Barrett. David
Gilmour was playing Londons Albert Hall on 29
May, and had just sailed through a complete
performance of his recent soft-rock solo album, On
an Island, when the audience were jarred out of
their slumbers with the words, Id like to
announce Mr David Bowie! Syds famous fan
elegantly dressed, spookily reminiscent of actor
John Hurt paused momentarily at the rapturous

applause, and almost shyly was heard to voice the

words, I hope I warrant that. For the crowd, it
was an extraordinary, unexpected, real pinchyourself moment, according to audience member
Ian Gittins. There were nostalgic flashes of that
London voice almost East End whose
whimsy, style and above all Englishness had been
inspired by the Pink Floyd singer who was to die
of diabetes just a few weeks later, in July. At the
end of the year, Gilmour and Bowies version of
Arnold Layne was released on single and
download, and would crack the UK Top 20.
Yet, over the weeks that the news and photos of
Davids appearance at the Albert Hall spread, so
did quotes from an off-the-cuff exchange at a
Vanity Fair party that same month: Im fed up
with the industry, he told Jada Yuan. And Ive
been fed up for quite some time Just dont
participate. Im taking a year off no touring, no
albums. I go for a walk every morning, and I watch
a ton of movies. One day, I watched three Woody
Allen movies in a row. On 5 June came the news
that Bowie would guest in what turned out to be a

hilarious edition of comedian Ricky Gervaiss

Extras. Gervaiss humour had always traded on
embarrassment, the agonising silence that follows
an attempted joke or insight; here, Bowie
brilliantly parodies his own image as a stoneyfaced manipulator, mercilessly mocking the little
fat man who attempts to bond with him, recruiting
the crowd around him for a singalong. The Little
Fat Man (with the Pug-Nosed Face) would be the
most significant new Bowie song of an entire halfdecade. Distressingly, fans noted, David now
seemed to confine himself to walk-on roles, with
the occasional sighting at fashion-related events
there was another tantalising guest appearance at
New York Citys Black Ball benefit that
November, again backed by Mike Garson, and
duetting with Alicia Keys on Changes.
Even Davids virtual appearances were
becoming infrequent. Since 2005, the updates in
his BowieNet journal had become more desultory,
before, on 5 October, 2006, David Bowie penned
the most enthusiastic entry in years: Yesterday I
got to be a character on tan-tara SpongeBob

SquarePants. We, the family, are thrilled. Nothing

else need happen this year, well, this week
anyway. And nothing else did. For in January
2007 came the news that a planned live date,
which would close a Bowiecurated Highline
festival the following May, had been quietly
cancelled. In place of the Bowie show was a live
rendition of The Fat Little Man with Ricky
Gervais and then nothing.
*
As David Bowie disappeared from the music
scene, the assumption that this was the calm before
a new burst of activity was natural, given what had
been a prodigious work rate in the previous forty
years. The off-the-cuff remark just dont
participate surely represented a passing
disenchantment. The prospect of a permanent
retirement seemed unthinkable except that
retirement was an option for which David had
been longing, for at least twenty years.
It was in the lull after Tonight that Bowie had
first shared a yearning for an escape with director
Julien Temple, who points out: He does always

appear very vibed up. But maybe hes not

underneath.
Over that period Temple had accompanied the
singer to Brixton Carnival, watching his minders
clearing a path ahead of him, witnessing the
problems of that bubble life. Watching David
work over three separate phases of his career, the
director saw the biggest problem David had to
contend with was the gruelling nature of
reinvention. The huge creative surge required to do
that again and again. It takes its toll, psychically
and thats beyond the normal clichs of fame. The
pressures of stardom do take their toll even on
David, who may not appear as overwhelmed by
them as others.
In their conversations over 1987 and 1989,
Bowie had shared with Temple a desire to
escape: to parachute out, to find a strategy that
would give a glorious exit. Over those years, of
course, Bowies career was sliding into a creative
downward spiral. The reception of Never Let Me
Down, and the debacle of Glass Spider, had
delayed Bowies fantasy of going out with a real,

stunning escape mechanism a kind of Houdini

escape from pop stardom.
For well over a decade, at least part of David
Bowie had still been seeking to make that glorious
exit, that one grandiose explosion behind which he
could disappear. Ultimately, mortality provided its
own less glamorous escape mechanism. And as
one of Davids friends points out, If you were in
hospital after a heart scare, would you be wishing
youd spent more time flogging yourself on tour?
Or would you be wishing you could spend more
time with your five-year-old?
In the meantime, those around David moved on.
Today, Coco is back from California and works
with David fairly closely once more. Having
devoted decades of her life to caring for him, she
has duties that are now less stressful. She now has
time to walk around Manhattan, with a dog that
keeps her company.
Iggy Pop reunited with his Stooges, to be fted
at festivals around the world, but by the late
nineties David had lost touch with the man who

more than anyone had benefited from his help.

Asked about their friendship by writer Robert
Phoenix, David acknowledged, I probably
shouldnt talk about it, while admitting, We have
drifted away from each other. The problem was a
simple clash of egos: Jimmy, he said, had come
to resent the fact that he couldnt do a fucking
article without my name being mentioned. Over
recent years, Iggy repaired his relationships with
Stooges guitarists Ron Asheton and James
Williamson, with whom he had fallen out
spectacularly. Yet there is still a certain reserve
when he discusses David, a man with whom he
was indisputably closer. According to one close
mutual friend of the two, I think in any close
friendship you can use the word love and in
many friendships youll see that one person loves
the other more than the other loves him or her. I
believe David loved Jim more than Jim loved
David. And, in the end, I think Jim found he could
manage without him. Three months younger than
David, Iggy continues to tour with the reformed
Stooges. He looks frail in person, with a

noticeable limp, but still hits the stage with the

joyous energy of a spring lamb.
The career of Tony Defries, the man who more
than anyone benefited from Bowies success, was
as eventful as that of his one-time employee. After
falling out with his next management charge, John
Cougar Mellencamp, Defries steered the troubled
early career of Sandy Dillon, was involved in
inconclusive negotiations to manage Madonna,
invested in a steel plant, and recently claimed to
have patented a new means of converting solar
energy into electricity. In August 2007, he
announced the imminent publication of an
autobiography, but six months later the book was
abandoned as news leaked that Defries had lost
$22 million in a Cayman Islands tax haven, set up
by the Swiss Bank Julius Baer. That spring, the
IRS started tracing Defries contacts, investigating
whether hed paid tax on the huge sum; over the
same period, lawyers working for Griffin Music,
to whom hed sold rights for several Bowie
rarities and live albums in the early nineties, were
in pursuit, as rumours spread that the Svengali had

abandoned his estate in Virginia and disappeared

to Europe. In 2009, he appeared to have resolved
his legal disputes and returned to the USA; but the
$22 million, a huge proportion of the money David
Bowie had paid to reclaim the most fertile period
of his creativity, had apparently disappeared for
ever.
More repercussions of the troubled relationship
between Bowie and MainMan rumbled on: in
2009, five years after Bowie Bonds were
downgraded by credit rating agency Moodys to
one notch above junk grade, headlines around the
world read, Is Bowie to blame for the credit
crunch? BBC journalist Evan Davis claimed the
global financial meltdown was caused by bankers
who took their cues from David Bowie; seeing him
securitise his future income, they followed his lead
with their mortgage business, with disastrous
results. (Subsequently, other financial experts
surfaced to ridicule the charge.) Bowies own
financial fortunes are thought to have declined
gently in the recession; in 1997, Business Age
magazine estimated his wealth at $917 million,

although this is regarded by most financial experts

as an exaggeration; a recent survey by the Sunday
Times put his wealth at 100 million. In 2012, his
back catalogue will be available for licence once
more, outside EMI, and many fans hope to see
more of what is thought to be the most intriguing
set of unreleased recordings of audio and video
outtakes of any major recording artist.
Yet there was one person, in the early years of
the twenty-first century, whose career was taking
shape even as David Bowie let his own lie fallow.
In November 2004, Duncan Jones painstakingly
recreated the England of 1979 a world he had
known only briefly for a commercial celebrating
the twenty-fifth anniversary of McCains Oven
Chips. His first press interview didnt even
mention his fathers identity; by the time hed been
recruited by ad guru Trevor Beattie and attracted
the gimlet-eyed glare of the Daily Mail for the
lesbian kiss outrage of his 2006 TV commercial
for fashion brand French Connection, a few reports
mentioned his parentage. Then in 2009, Duncan
Jones elegantly stepped out into the worlds media

to publicise his thoughtful, lovingly crafted debut

movie, Moon.
Duncans interviews provided a revealing
insight into the life of David Bowie, father: there
were stories of how theyd worked on stop-frame
animation together, and of David bringing home his
bootleg videos of Star Wars . There was also
evidence of how David had kept a tasteful distance
to avoid overshadowing his son. (Bill Zysblat,
Davids business manager, was credited as
executive producer on the film, but there was no
mention of Mr Jones senior.) It is probably unfair
to note the presence of the words I think in
Duncans description of his upbringing: I think we
always loved each other, but he was travelling and
working a lot, and I was in his custody, so it was
tricky, because obviously there were people
who would look after me, but a lot of the time he
might not be around. So it was an unusual
relationship.
David had often voiced his guilt over his sons
unsettled childhood; but there was some
vindication of the way hed nudged his son

towards the cinema in the overwhelming positive

reaction to Moon, which was made for the
unthinkably tiny budget of $5m, grossed $6m
within the first nine weeks of release, and picked
up two international awards before finally
clinching Duncan a BAFTA award for Most
Promising Newcomer in February 2010. Jones
politely dismissed suggestions that his modest
science-fiction gem had been influenced by his
dads Space Oddity (or indeed Kubricks 2001),
citing instead later influences such as Silent
Running and Bladerunner. But there was plenty of
resonance with his fathers work. The isolation
and loneliness of the sole protagonist, Sam Bell,
evokes the lonely childhood of Duncan Jones and
the isolation of his father. More profoundly, Bell
takes solace in sculpting a church out of balsa: an
image that echoed Merricks cardboard church, or
the cathedral made of matchsticks which David
had eulogised in one of his Heathen interviews as
a symbol of the British amateur tradition that
compulsion to perfect a job, whether or not anyone
will see it. Lastly, Bell is imprisoned in a cycle of

rebirth, wearing out each new manifestation of

himself until finally he manages to achieve, as
Bowie never did, his Houdini escape.
Davids appearance with Duncan at the
Sundance Film Festival on 23 January, 2009, was
a surprise event, fleeting, but perfectly timed;
remaining in front of the camera long enough to
ensure a flurry of press for the movie, David,
dressed in grey, let his son do the talking. At a
Q&A after the screening, Duncan thanked his father
for giving him the time to work out what I wanted
to do because its taken me a while.
Together with an appearance alongside Iman for
Moons debut at New Yorks Tribeca Film
Festival in April, this would be Bowies only
media outing of the year; by 2010, Iman would
generally appear on red carpets solo, until David
turned up in a tux and black scarf for his wifes
acceptance of her Fashion Icon award. And
every few months there would be a new reissue:
the DVD based on his VH1 Storytellers
appearance, ten years after it was recorded; a
fortieth-anniversary edition of the Space Oddity

album, complete with an iPhone app, allowing fans

to mix their own version of Davids debut hit; and
later, the announcement of an illustrated book of
Bowie artefacts.
For the fans, Bowies continuing absence
seemed an almost unforgivable desertion. Day by
day, fewer of them pay the $60-a-year subscription
fee to BowieNet, while the bowieart website
closed down entirely in 2008. The faithful huddle
together on the net, their numbers diminishing.
Despite the continuing reissues of his classic
works, there would be a growing consensus among
fans and business figures that this man is not
maintaining his work; that its like a grand estate
with weeds sprouting in the garden and paint
flaking from the window frames. What could he
possibly be doing that was more important than
attending to them?
It is the wrong way round, says George
Underwood, as he pours coffee into a china mug
decorated with one of his serene, slightly sinister
paintings and places a couple of lemon curd

biscuits on a plate. Yesterday George celebrated

his sixty-first birthday with the aid of a giant
hamper of Fortnum & Mason delicacies sent by his
schoolfriend and ex-bandmate. Today, we sip
coffee and sample some of the hampers goodies,
as George describes his 1958 trip to the Isle of
Wight with a ukulele and a washboard bass in the
back of the van, of cocky letters sent to
millionaires, and of the times his best mate shot
him looks like daggers because hed scored his
own record deal with Mickie Most, who groomed
him for success, advising him on the music
business and driving him around the West End in
his Roller.
For many fellow pupils from Bromley, or kids
whod hang around The King Bees, George
good-looking, outgoing was the boy most likely
to. Yet his career in music was impressive but
short. After one single with Mickie Most
something happened: I will never know what
caused it, but the men in white coats came to take
me away. Confined to hospital for three months,
he would never know if someone had slipped a tab

of acid in his drink, or some other random stimulus

had triggered his breakdown. A promising career
was over. It was, he says, a blessing in disguise.
Because I dont think Id be sitting here talking to
you. I would have said yes to everything and
ended up dead somewhere.
David, his friend once more, would eventually
secure the success he craved. George, over the
same period, established himself as an artist and
illustrator, crafting dozens of record and book
covers, for David, Marc Bolan and countless
others. Today, sitting in his elegant, airy north
London house, his artworks studded throughout
like jewels, there is still a kind of wonder for what
his friend achieved. Not for the money, or the
fame, but simply, Wasnt he brave? To do what he
did?
Yet with the admiration, theres a sense of what
David missed out on: the family life, all the little
tokens of which surround us, the photos, the wellworn objects that signal a well-worn life. For a
moment, I feel pity for Underwoods friend. And
then George mentions how David has lived his life

the wrong way round. How the twenty-year-old

who loved kids is finally getting the chance to
spend time with his own, as a sixty-year-old. A
few weeks later, I find other old friends whom
David has started calling again, to tell them of his
nine-year-old daughter, as if what shes up to is
more interesting than his current business. Often
hell open a phone call by putting Lexi on the
phone for a chat. As if there just might be a legacy
more important than the hundreds of songs known
to remain in the Bowie vault.
In the meantime, the music is not static. Every new
generation of musicians, whether aimed at the
stadium or the college circuit, takes some part of
Bowies legacy as a template. As Echo and the
Bunnymens Ian McCulloch, a leader of the
generation of musicians that followed him in the
1970s, puts it, He changed the face of music. And
the world. Everybodys got mad hair or mad
clothes now when he kicked off in 1973 it was
rare. I was twelve when Starman came out, and
it connected with me in a way that no other record

ever had. I was still impressionable and naive

and at that moment I knew exactly what I wanted to
do.
Generations since have experienced similar
epiphanies. Bowie has been derided for billing
himself as a cult artist, a seemingly ludicrous claim
for someone who has scored so many Top 10
singles, yet there is a truth in this, for his music
continues to speak to outsiders, those who are
either on the edge, or wish to go there. For Black
Francis of the Pixies, whose music would define
the nineties so-called alternative rock scene, it was
the Bowie of Low, Heroes and The Idiot that
called to him: It was so brave. That sentiment
occurs again and again: He showed no fear, says
Nicolas Godin of Air, who discovered the same
trio of albums while training as an architect in
Versailles. The French bands humble career
was inspired by the example of how Bowie mixed
electronics and rock, but Godin stresses that
Bowies influence goes far beyond this: Hes the
total artist the look, the voice, the talent to
compose, the stage presence. The beauty. Nobody

is like that any more. Everybody is reachable; he

was unreachable.
So many other artists have picked up on aspects
of Bowies work, from Madonna to Lady Gaga,
Radiohead to Momus the enigmatic Scots
musician who laments that I was lucky, as a
teenager, to have someone like that to latch on to.
Bowie wasnt just a rock star in the seventies he
was an exemplary creative animal. He took
influences from so many sources: from Kabuki,
from Jean Genet and William Burroughs, from the
New York Downtown art scene, from Die Brcke,
and so on. Because of his influence, musicians
could take their cue from other artforms. I saw an
interview with him where he said he thought he
might have been a good teacher if he hadnt been a
rock star, because he loves introducing people to
cultural things and seeing their excitement. And I
thought, Well, youve been both!
Philip Glass, a composer, friend and interpreter
of Bowie, also laments what now seems like an
all-too-brief period when popular music and
experimentation co-existed. What Bowie and Eno

were trying to do was to redefine certain

parameters in pop music. To work less in terms of
formula and to work in a more experimental
fashion. The idea was that pop music had an
artform to it; it wasnt always commercial music, it
didnt always have to be entertainment music,
those people could work in another mode. It was
this funny world of art rock, which has since
disappeared. But it was a beautiful moment for a
while.
John Lennon, the man who acted almost as an
elder brother to David Bowie, occasionally
complained how the world always wanted more
from his band. The Beatles made eleven albums
together, hed tell people: What more could you
want? As David Bowie wanders around New
York, watching his daughter grow up, hes entitled
to share Lennons sentiment. Yet even those who
worked with David in the past cant help sharing
the fans longing that once again, this man will
free the music that will otherwise stay locked
within. Im waiting, says Mike Garson, his
longest-serving accompanist. The magic is not in

the air right now. Were in a little bit of a slump so

maybe in a couple of years hell start hearing the
next thing.
Still, there remains the uncertainty of that
elusive alchemy. Can the man who transformed
himself perform that magic again?
If hes not feeling it, who knows? says Garson.
Sometimes an artist knows when to cool it. Why
do something if youre not feeling it or hearing it?
Well see whats meant to be.

DISCOGRAPHY
David Bowie
Recorded: November 1966 February 1967;
Decca Studios, West Hampstead, London.
Released: Deram, 1 June, 1967.
Chart Peak: (UK); (US).
Key Personnel: Derek Dek Fearnley (bs,
arrangements); John Eager (dms); Derek Boyes
(kbds, early songs only); plus session musicians
unknown.
Producer: Mike Vernon.
Nineteen-year-old David Bowie had bowled over
Decca executives, who were convinced of his
genius. This first studio album provides convincing
evidence of the fact in everything but the songs.
The sheer breadth and ambition of the material
from the kooky sci-fi epic We Are Hungry Men,
to the earnest, Lionel Bart-ish When I Live My
Dream; the playfully sinister Uncle Arthur to the

disturbingly psychotic Please Mr. Gravedigger

(which references the Myra Hindley murders) is
staggering, even today. His confidence in the
studio was, in retrospect, astounding, but the young
Bowie lacked the skills to realise his lofty
ambitions and its only the more conventional
material, such as When I Live My Dream or the
single The Laughing Gnome, which succeeds on
its own terms. Yet although later derided, this
quirky album established Bowies reputation amid
a small crowd of London faces. More crucially
still, it gave him his first experience of using the
studio like a giant sketch pad, a technique which
would become fundamental to his career.

David Bowie
aka Space Oddity (UK 1972 re-release); Man of
Words/Man of Music (US).
Recorded: June September 1969; Trident
Studios, London.
Released: Philips/Mercury, November 1969.

Chart Peak: 17 (UK); (US.

Key Personnel: Mick Wayne, Tim Renwick (gtr);
John Honk Lodge (bs); John Cambridge (dms);
Keith Christmas (acoustic gtr).
Producer: Tony Visconti.
A failure of an album that betrayed its creators
lack of confidence, Bowies second release was
almost an afterthought to his obvious breakthrough
song, Space Oddity its style and song
selections arranged by committee. Predictably,
perhaps, it therefore never quite transcends its
obvious influences and limitations to become a
coherent statement in its own right. Yet in the
larger context of Davids career, it has many
moments of charm, for the very reason that it is
unconsidered and confused. Letter to Hermione
is gorgeously gauche, while Cygnet Committee is
a grandiose construction which shows David
attempting to piece together a philosophy and style
and failing. Only Space Oddity truly transcends
its intentions.

The Man Who Sold the World

Recorded: April May 1970; Trident and
Advision Studios, London.
Released: Mercury, November 1970 (US);
Philips, April 1971 (UK).
Chart Peak: 26 (UK); 105 (US). Both on RCA rerelease.
Key Personnel: Mick Ronson (gtr); Tony Visconti
(bs); Mick Woody Woodmansey (dms); Ralph
Mace (Moog synthesiser).
Producer: Tony Visconti.
Bowies first truly gripping work, The Man Who
Sold the World is dark in sound and tone.
Crucially it took collaborators fellow artists,
even to fashion David Bowies sound for him,
and engineer Ken Scott confirms that Tony
Visconti and Mick Ronson laboured on their own
for much of the album. Yet, for all that, the spark
that fires up this album was Bowies: in framing
the concept and delegating crucial tasks, he
inspired his collaborators to surpass anything they
achieved on their own (Ronson, Visconti and

Woodmanseys work as Ronno would be famously

dull). However erratic his involvement, the
albums sense of unease the disturbing unreality
of the title track, the twisting visions of Width of a
Circle, or the child-like empathy of All the
Madmen derives entirely from Bowie, who
seems most himself when he relies most on others.

Hunky Dory
Recorded: July 1971; Trident Studios, London.
Released: RCA, December 1971.
Chart Peak: 3 (UK); 93 (US).
Key Personnel: Mick Ronson (gtr); Trevor Bolder
(bs); Mick Woody Woodmansey (dms); Rick
Wakeman (pno).
Producers: Ken Scott and David Bowie.
The opening salvo of the majestic trio of albums
that launched the Bowie legend was understated
compared to its successors. While there were
plenty of out-there moments the campness of

Queen Bitch, the louche tribute to Andy Warhol,

and the enigmatic The Bewlay Brothers in the
main, Hunky Dorys appeal was subtle, deriving
mainly from the faultless effervescence of the
writing. Above all, there is an infectious love of
life and a sure-footed sense of destiny: Oh! You
Pretty Things slogan, make way for the homo
superior, is self-aggrandising, a camp joke and a
manifesto for a kooky philosophy.
Hunky Dory is as crucial a part of Bowies
cultural legacy as its better-known successor, for
w he r e Ziggy, in essence, involved donning a
quilted catsuit, Hunky Dory was based on selftransformation and positive visualisation. Ziggys
songs are skilled and knowing, Hunky Dorys are
translucently innocent and effortless: Oh! You
Pretty Things was inspired by a dream; Life On
Mars? arrived on a bus trip to Lewisham; Kooks
was arranged and recorded within days of
Duncans birth. The arrangement and playing, too,
is instinctive but faultless, the product both of
Mick Ronsons unrivalled musicality and of
Bowies motivational skills. The tributes to

Warhol, Dylan and Lou Reed are both naive and

cynical; by paying them fealty, Bowie also gives
himself licence to assimilate them. Lastly,
Changes would be the manifesto that energised
Bowie and all around him; matching a luscious
McCartney-style melody with a powerful Lennonstyle message, it would only graze the charts but,
crucially, would energise a tiny group of believers,
who helped their golden boy ascend to fame over
the months that followed.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the

Spiders From Mars
Recorded: November 1971 January 1972 ;
Trident Studios, London.
Released: RCA, June 1972.
Chart Peak: 5 (UK); 75 (US).
Key Personnel: Mick Ronson (gtr); Tony Visconti
(bs); Trevor Bolder (bs); Mick Woody
Woodmansey (dms).
Producers: Ken Scott and David Bowie.

I f Hunky Dory came from the heart, Ziggy came

from the head. The constituent elements were being
assembled as early as January, 1971, when David
wrote the magnificent, pile-driving Moonage
Daydream a few days after first hearing an Iggy
record. Other crucial blocks were hoisted into
place right up to the final days of recording, with
the title track and breakthrough single Starman
written well into the sessions. Inspired by Iggy and
fifties rocker Vince Taylor, Ziggy was rather
polite in comparison: its songs more precise and
both delivery and production arguably overrefined. (Only the Santa Monica bootleg, an
underrated influence on seventies punk that was
officially released in 2008, demonstrates the
power of The Spiders in their prime.) Instead, its
the drama of the ideas that give the album its
power, opening and closing with two magnificent
ballads, Five Years and Rock n Roll Suicide,
and taking the listener on an exhausting emotional
rollercoaster in between. The songs function
perfectly as rock n roll, with Mick Ronsons
guitar the electricity that brings each finely crafted

chord sequence to life, so perfectly that theyd

inspire a generation of rock bands even Iggy and
his Stooges, who lifted Suffragette Citys central
chord change for their punk anthem Search and
Destroy. Yet they also stand apart from rock
nroll, which gives them a wider power, for
Ziggy works overall as a drama which demands
suspension of disbelief from each of us, and hence
makes us all participants. Even today, its a thrill
to be part of the action.

Aladdin Sane
Recorded: October 1972; RCA, NYC. December
1972 and January 1973; Trident, London.
Released: RCA, April 1973.
Chart Peak: 1 (UK), 17 (US).
Key Personnel: Mick Ronson (gtr); Trevor Bolder
(bs); Mick Woody Woodmansey (dms); Mike
Garson (pno); Ken Fordham, Brian Wilshaw (sax).
Producers: Ken Scott and David Bowie.

Both slicker and sketchier than its predecessor,

Aladdin Sane is in some ways a more convincing
document on the nature of fame and show business
than Ziggy its flakiness adds authenticity. The
strained, edgy cover of Lets Spend the Night
Together is shallow, yet glamorous; The Jean
Genie, too, is outrageously slick, a magnificently
flagrant rip-off of The Yardbirds. Yet the albums
great songs are cavernous in their depth, with Mike
Garsons rippling piano evoking decadence or
oblivion in haunting songs like Aladdin Sane or
Time, while Ronson and Bolders musicianship
is devastatingly sophisticated, most notably on
Lady Grinning Soul. The personal dramas being
played out add to the edginess: The Prettiest Star
is a restatement of Davids paean to Angie,
recorded just as he decided his marriage was
doomed, while arguments over Woodys drumming
on Panic in Detroit helped inspire the termination
of The Spiders, just as they were at their peak.

Pin Ups

Recorded: July August 1973; Chteau

DHrouville, France.
Released: RCA, October 1973.
Chart Peak: 1 (UK); 23 (US).
Key Personnel: Mick Ronson (gtr etc.); Trevor
Bolder (bs); Aynsley Dunbar (dms); Mike Garson
(pno); Ken Fordham (sax); Geoff MacCormack
(perc, backing vox).
Producers: Ken Scott and David Bowie.
Recorded in a race to beat Bryan Ferrys covers
album, Pin Ups was an odd mixture of nostalgia
and cynicism. Mick Ronson had mixed feelings
about his imminent solo career, Trevor Bolder and
Ken Scott were completely estranged, while David
affected indifference to the power struggles around
him. Pin Ups was therefore nostalgic not only for
the good times of sixties London (some of it seen
through the eyes of a Yank Scott Richardson
who helped choose the tracks), but for The Spiders
themselves. The album itself is both a Warholian
display of appropriation featuring songs like The
Whos Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere, that Bowie

had already used once with The Lower Third and

a demonstration of Bowie the unabashed fan. For
Americans, the album represented a brilliantly
decadent collection of garage-band nuggets; for
many Brits, the covers were predictable, insipid
and watered down, with the frenzied teenage angst
of songs like The Easybeats Friday On My Mind
reworked into turgid, platform-booted camp.
Unashamedly exploitative, intermittently vital, the
album fell well short of brilliance except in one
respect: it was a devastating so what? riposte to
those who claimed that Bowies music was merely
a cynical reworking of The Who, The Kinks and
The Yardbirds.

Diamond Dogs
Recorded: December 1973 January 1974;
Olympic Studios, London and Studio L, Hilversum,
The Netherlands.
Released: RCA, April 1974.
Chart Peak: 1 (UK); 5 (US).

Key Personnel: Herbie Flowers (bs); David

Bowie, Alan Parker (gtr); Aynsley Dunbar, Tony
Newman (dms);
Producer: David Bowie (Tony Visconti oversees
mix).
Bowies depiction of a future dystopia was messy
and sprawling, inspired by George Orwells 1984,
but also permeated with the paranoia now
besetting his friends and colleagues. Previous
sessions had been focused and compact; Diamond
Dogs once the nucleus had been assembled
around Blue Mink musicians Flowers, Parker and
Newman was confused, with overdubs layered
on messily and Spiders bassist Trevor Bolder
called in perhaps out of desperation to help
salvage one song. Bowies songwriting changed,
too: the melodic inventiveness and rolling chord
sequences hed first harnessed on Hunky Dory
disappeared; instead theres a new concentration
on texture, simple rock chord sequences and
swaggering rhythms heavily influenced by The
Rolling Stones, whom Bowie aimed to knock off

their pedestal. Adding to the mess, there was

confusion about the credits, and the catchy Rebel
Rebel stands out like a sore thumb alongside the
resonant Sweet Thing and the bizarre, hellish
funk of 1984. Overall, the album is a beautiful
mess, its confused mle every bit as appropriate
as Ziggys finely honed choreography.
David Live
Recorded: 812 July 1974; Tower Theatre,
Philadelphia, PA.
Released: RCA, October 1974.
Chart Peak: 2 (UK); 8 (US).
Key Personnel: Earl Slick (gtr); Mike Garson
(pno); Herbie Flowers (bs); Tony Newman (dms);
David Sanborn (sax); Richard Grando (baritone
sax); Pablo Rosario (perc); Geoff MacCormack,
Gui Andrisano (backing vox).
Producer: Tony Visconti
The old-school showbiz element of Bowies
career was never more evident than in MainMans

revival of the neglected tradition of covers and

live albums, designed primarily to keep the
corporate presses rolling. Widely lambasted on
release, David Live does indeed show his music
coarsened, with overcooked backing and overemoted singing replacing the electrifying joy of,
say, The Spiders Santa Monica bootleg. The
album is not totally devoid of charm Sanborns
sax interlacing with the All the Young Dudes
chorus; the shuffling undercurrent of drums and
bass on Rebel Rebel but the album highlight,
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, is perhaps the
ultimate indictment. In this setting, it sounds
stripped down and affecting, but one listen to the
Ohio Players jewel-like original reminds us how
lumpen the Bowie machine has become.

Young Americans
Recorded: August 1974; Sigma Sound,
Philadelphia, PA. January 1975; Electric Lady,
NYC.

Released: RCA, March 1975.

Chart Peak: 2 (UK); 9 (US).
Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar (gtr); Willie
Weeks (bs); Andy Newmark (dms); Mike Garson
(pno); David Sanborn (sax); Larry Washington
(conga); Pablo Rosario (perc); Ava Cherry, Luther
Vandross, Robin Clark, Anthony Hinton, Diane
Sumler, Geoff MacCormak (backing vox). Fame
and Across the Universe musicians include Earl
Slick, John Lennon (gtr); Emir Kason (bs); Dennis
Davis (dms).
Producer: Tony Visconti.
The commercial success of Young Americans was
so overwhelming, the stylistic makeover so
complete, that it has become a set-piece, an
exemplar of an artist often typecast as
manipulative, or cold-blooded. Yet the opposite is
the case: the genesis of Young Americans was
instinctive, born of a fans enthusiasm, and the
album was recorded on the hoof, like the material
that inspired it. The rushed recording adds an edge
and adrenalin readily audible on the title track, a

splicing of brittle funk with Springsteen-style

lyrical imagery, that, given more gloss, would have
sounded trite. Can You Hear Me? and
Fascination, too, are entrancing, sketched out
quickly. The albums high and low points were
similarly rushed: Fame, recorded in New York,
is an impressionistic assemblage that, with its
unvarying central chord sequence and riff adapted
from The Rascals Jungle Walk, anticipated the
sampling culture of the eighties and nineties;
Across the Universe, the other last-minute
addition, is a cloying example of Bowies new,
over-emoted, yodelling singing style, partly
inspired by Bryan Ferry; worse still, it bumped off
Its Gonna Be Me a superb showpiece for
Bowies voice. Sketchy and inconsistent from
todays perspective, in 1975 the album restored the
momentum lost by the unconvincing David Live,
while the impressionistic working methods
pioneered here would underpin Bowies career
through the rest of the decade and more.

Station to Station
Recorded: November 1975; Cherokee and Record
Plant Studios, Los Angeles, CA.
Released: RCA, January 1976.
Chart Peak: 5 (UK); 3 (US).
Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick (gtr);
Dennis Davis (dms); George Murray (bs); Roy
Bittan (pno); Geoff MacCormack (backing vox).
Producers: David Bowie and Harry Maslin.
The key turning point in Bowies recording career,
Station to Station marked the transition from
conventional songs, written on the piano or guitar
and recorded at breakneck speed, to slabs of sound
constructed entirely in the studio. Even those songs
sketched out before Bowie arrived at Cherokee,
such as Golden Years, were transformed within
it all of its key elements worked up while the
studio clock was running.
Most accounts depict Bowie undergoing some
kind of cocaine-induced breakdown during the end
of 1975; his psychological trauma was indeed

extreme, but during the sessions even drug buddies

like Glenn Hughes noted he was in full command
of the studio. Given that Bowie himself has little
memory of this time, we will never get a more
coherent picture of his mental state than in the
contents of this album. The title track is obsessive,
megalomaniacal, yearning for spiritual clarity yet
oddly muso (the churning rhythms and heavy
textures were inspired by Jethro Tull); the catchy,
mildly deranged TVC 15 its vocal interjections
obviously influenced by The Yardbirds Good
Morning Little Schoolgirl was a comical take on
Bowies recent months spent watching grainy
Second World War footage over and over; while
the magnificent, sensitive Golden Years also
reflects Bowies ability to surface from a cocaine
jag and dispense insightful career advice or a
hilariously deadpan joke. Although the melodicism
o f Hunky Dory was by now a thing of the past,
Station to Station is packed with invention a
bizarre blending of spritely and monumental
themes and marks the point at which David
Bowie moved from pop musician to phenomenon.

Low
Recorded: September early October 1976;
Chteau DHrouville, Paris. Overdubbed and
mixed Hansa Studio 2, Berlin.
Released: RCA, January 1977.
Chart Peak: 2 (UK); 11 (US).
Key Personnel: Brian Eno (vocals, kbds and
treatments); Carlos Alomar, Ricky Gardiner (gtr);
Dennis Davis (dms); George Murray (bs); Roy
Young (pno, organ).
Producers: David Bowie and Tony Visconti.
Its title was a reference both to being low profile,
and to Davids mental state beset by marital and
management problems. Yet those troubles were
offset by the thrill of a new beginning, and an
album that was dismissed by many on release as
inhuman and inaccessible stands today as joyous,
uplifting and optimistic. The glacial beauty of
Brian Enos EMS synthesiser, which dominates
side two, is balanced by the zest and humanity of

side one. Bowies voice is rendered naked and

unaffected, with many songs enlivened by
distinctive soul references for instance, the
melody from Stand By Me that echoes Always
Crashing in the Same Car. As if to help orientate
the listener, the album follows an impeccable
internal
logic,
with
concise,
up-tempo
instrumentals bookending side one, which was
chockfull of catchy melodies and rhythms, to
contrast with the icy languor of side two. As
Bowie intended, this is great art, but its great pop
music, too.

Heroes
Recorded: May 1977; Hansa Studio 2, Berlin.
Released: RCA, October 1977.
Chart Peak: 3 (UK); 35 (US).
Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp
(gtr); Dennis Davis (dms); George Murray (bs);
Brian Eno (synths etc.).
Producers: David Bowie and Tony Visconti.

The only album of Bowies Berlin trilogy to be

recorded entirely in the city at Hansas
capacious Studio 2 Heroes was a tougher,
heavier album than its predecessor, with chunkier
rhythms overlaid by Robert Fripps audacious
guitar work, all recorded in two days flat. Bowies
own lyrics and singing were freer: the most
intuitive, improvised and simple of his career. The
songs, meanwhile, were assembled in almost
random fashion from odd snippets, then lovingly
overlaid, with odd little melodies a marimba
here, a koto there emerging on every new listen.
Although the album is less funky and more
Germanic than Low, the key figure alongside
Bowie and Eno is Carlos Alomar, whose
inventive, infectious guitar melodies underpin most
of the songs most notably the title track, where he
powers the music on even as Robert Fripps guitar
soars above and Bowies voice, totally without
artifice, cranks up the emotional temperature. His
simplest, most affecting and most memorable song,
the title track sounds timeless today but was out of
time in 1977, only reaching number twenty-four in

the UK singles charts.

Stage
Recorded: April May 1978; The Spectrum,
Philadelphia, PA, Providence Civic Centre,
Providence, RI, and Boston Garden, Boston, MA.
Released: RCA, September 1978.
Chart Peak: 5 (UK); 44 (US).
Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar, Adrian Belew
(gtr); Dennis Davis (dms and perc); George
Murray (bs); Simon House (vln); Sean Mayes
(pno); Roger Powell (kbds and synth).
An impressive memento of a challenging,
innovative
tour, Stage still sounds bravely
unconventional today; its finest moments, rather
than the expected crowd-pleasers, are the glacial
and uncompromising Warszawa or the spiky, offkilter Breaking Glass. In isolation, the Ziggy-era
tracks falter, sorely lacking the muscularity of the
original versions, but Bowies voice, at least, is

mostly flawless, undiminished.

Lodger
Recorded: September 1978 and March 1979;
Mountain Studios, Montreux, Switzerland, and
Record Plant, NYC.
Released: RCA, May 1979.
Chart Peak: 4 (UK); 20 (US).
Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar, Adrian Belew
(gtr); Dennis Davis (dms); George Murray (bs);
Brian Eno (synths etc.); Simon House (vln); Sean
Mayes (pno); Roger Powell (synth).
Producers: David Bowie and Tony Visconti.
Both more conventional and more intellectual than
its predecessors, Lodger was denoted the last of
Bowies Berlin trilogy (or triptych, as he termed
it) but is distinct both in mood and method and
disappointing in comparison. The singing is
mannered self-conscious yelps on Red Money,
Bowie channelling David Byrne channelling

Bowie on DJ and an alarmingly literal Scott

Walker imitation on Look Back in Anger the
songs more conventional and the recording process
dryer, in every sense of the term. Still, once
preconceptions are abandoned, the album is
studded with delights. Its quirky rather than
emotional, with delicious detailing: the fairground
Arabic lilt of Yassassin, the unassumingly
romantic theme of Fantastic Voyage, the constant
tension between the plain, almost predictable
chord sequences and the random guitar and vocal
explosions scattered throughout. Although Lodger
would never equal the emotional impact of Low or
Heroes, it nonetheless defined the sound of
eighties art rock, and echoes of its spiky, New
Wave quirkiness can still be heard today.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

Recorded: February 1980; Record Plant, NYC.
April 1980; Good Earth, London.
Released: RCA, September 1980.

Chart Peak: 3 (UK); 12 (US).

Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp
(gtr); Chuck Hammer (synth gtr); Dennis Davis
(dms); George Murray (bs); Roy Bittan (pno); plus
Pete Townshend (gtr); Andy Clarke (synth).
Producers: David Bowie and Tony Visconti
Recorded during yet another frenzy of activity, as
Bowie re-explored New York and prepared for
The Elephant Man, Scary Monsters was a kind of
organised pop version of Lodger. The endless
experimentation favoured by Brian Eno was
abandoned; instead, Bowie stalked the sessions
with a clipboard, ticking off items on a to-do list,
for songs that were mostly sketched out in advance.
The material was almost old-fashioned in Bowie
terms: Up the Hill Backwards evokes both Bill
Withers Lean On Me and Young Americans ;
Ashes to Ashes features the old-school musical
bridge (the shriek of nothing is killing me) used
in classic Bowie songs from The Lower Thirds
Cant Help Thinking About Me to China Girl.
Self-references abound: Teenage Wildlife

addresses Bowies influence on the world over the

classic two-chord change of Heroes, while, of
course, Major Tom pops up once more on Ashes
to Ashes an almost impossibly sophisticated
assemblage adorned by the guitar synth of Chuck
Hammer, who noted the almost telepathic bond
between Bowie and Tony Visconti as they seized
on musical ideas and honed the sound, intuitively.
The dense, tough, rock-meets-funk backing was
hugely influential listen to Blur, The Strokes, or
dozens of art-rock bands for evidence and
represents Bowies most versatile band, ever, at
their very peak. A few months later, theyd all be
looking for new jobs.

Baal
Recorded: September 1981; Hansa Studio 2,
Berlin.
Released: RCA, February 1982.
Chart Peak: 29 (UK); (US).
Key Personnel: Dominic Muldowney (gtr,

arrangements). Main backing comes from Berlin

session musicians headed by percussionist Sherry
Bertram.
Producer: Tony Visconti.
The blinkered overview of Bowies career is that
his last great album was Scary Monsters, yet this
contract-filler recorded in two rushed days in
Berlin is, in its own way, a masterpiece. The
setting of Brechts songs is small-scale, almost
domestic, with most of Davids vocals dropped in
during a single afternoon. The result is a
masterclass in singing and an album that is always
intriguing. On first impression it seems polite and
formal, but on better acquaintance, it is as great an
evocation of Bowies Berlin years as Heroes,
for it preserves magnificently the last echoes of
Brechts adopted city.

Lets Dance
Recorded: December 1982; Power Station, NYC.

Released: EMI, April 1983.

Chart Peak: 1 (UK); 4 (US).
Key Personnel: Stevie Ray Vaughan, Nile
Rodgers (gtr); Carmine Rojas, Bernard Edwards
(bs); Rob Sabino (kbds); Tony Thompson, Omar
Hakim (dms).
Producers: David Bowie and Nile Rodgers.
Vilified in the decades after its release, partly
because it signalled the rise of mainstream Bowie,
it is arguable that Lets Dance is one of his most
underrated albums. It was certainly one of his most
influential, for its luxurious, minimal sound,
dominated by Tony Thompsons swinging drums,
stripped-down R&B horns and tough but
exhibitionist guitar, would become a template for
the late eighties. Its fair, too, to comment that it
launched the era of form over function for Bowie,
as well as his followers: with just eight tracks,
including old collaborations with Iggy Pop and
Giorgio Moroder and a cover of Criminal
World, written by arty New Wavers Metro, he
was plainly short of good songs. But not of great

ones, for the title track which, according to

producer Nile Rodgers started life as a folksy
Byrds-style ditty and the impeccably infectious
Modern Love were a pinnacle of eighties pop.
China Girl, too, is a sumptuously pimped-out
version of the dark, gothic original, completing the
irresistible opening trio of songs which announced
Bowies ascension to the mainstream. Other songs
Without You, Ricochet, Criminal World
are an assemblage of pleasant noises and pass the
time nicely, Shake It is dull and Cat People
desecrates the memory of a Bowie classic it was
lost until exhumed by Tarantino for Inglorious
Basterds. While not a Great Album, Lets Dance
is at least a Great Eighties Album.

Tonight
Recorded: May June 1984; Le Studio, Morin
Heights, Canada.
Released: EMI, September 1984.
Chart Peak: 1 (UK); 11 (US).

Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar (gtr); Derek

Bramble (bs); Carmine Rojas (bs); Omar Hakim
(dms).
Producers: David Bowie, Derek Bramble and
Hugh Padgham.
In retrospect, every failing of Tonight had been
evident in Bowies career to date: a rushed
recording, shameless lifting of ideas, overwrought
vocals, undistinguished songs and excessive
reliance on sidemen. But on Tonight, they came
together all at once, in a perfect storm of
mediocrity.
The prime example of Tonights failure is its
best song, Loving the Alien: a decent, subtle tune,
it also represented a crucial loss of confidence, for
whereas previously Bowie had taken his stylistic
cues from the underground, here he sources from
the mainstream the chorused guitar sounds from
The Police, the vocal ah ahs from Laurie
Anderson and the marimbas from The Thompson
Twins. The three Iggy songs were likewise decent
enough, but were reworked as leaden white

reggae. Worse still, the warbling vocal style,

apparently influenced by Bryan Ferry, plumbs new
depths on Tonight and God Only Knows, which
with its clumsy, predictable arrangement sounds
like a pub singer punting for wedding and bar
mitzvah jobs two decades on, hed reinvented
The Kon-Rads. As one of his musicians once
commented, David Bowie was known for stealing
from the best. Now the self-proclaimed tasteful
thief was finally pilloried for taking something
worthless.

Never Let Me Down

Recorded: Circa December 1986; Mountain,
Montreux, Switzerland, and Power Station, NYC.
Released: EMI, April 1987.
Chart Peak: 6 (UK); 34 (US).
Key Personnel: Carlos Alomar, Peter Frampton
(gtr); Erdal Kizilcay (bs, dms, kbds etc.); Carmine
Roja (bs); Phillipe Saisse (pno, kbds).
Producers: David Bowie and David Richards.

Often in Bowies career, preconceptions and

received wisdom are wrong; however, the 1980s
consensus that Never Let Me Down stinks still
holds good today. Bereft of inspiration, fantasising
of one last hit to provide a glorious exit, Bowie
abandoned the intuitive, impressionistic approach
to recording hed used for a decade and prepared
meticulously. Perhaps it was lack of confidence
that inspired his bizarre vocal mimicry: on the title
song he copies John Lennon, on Day-In Day-Out
its Prince, Bang Bang is a cover of Iggy Pop
copying Billy Idol, while the laughably slushy
Zeroes sounds like a Michael Jackson reject:
Bowie had gone from Heroes to Zeroes in just a
decade.
More confused even than his Deram debut, the
album was a strange throw-back to David Jones,
the teenager whod mimicked his idols for Shel
Talmy. As with those earliest efforts, the results
were not so much awful as forgettable. The album
seemed to indicate a man in the grip of a midlife
crisis, adrift without talented sidemen but for the
fact that, over the same period, hed bashed out

superb songs for director Julien Temple and friend

Iggy Pop.

Tin Machine
Recorded: August 1988 1989; Mountain,
Montreux, Switzerland, and Compass Point,
Nassau, CA.
Released: EMI, May 1989.
Chart Peak: 3(UK); 28 (US).
Key Personnel: Reeves Gabrels (gtr); Tony Sales
(bs); Hunt Sales (dms); Kevin Armstrong (gtr,
kbds).
Producers: Tin Machine and Tim Palmer.
Tin Machines debut was mostly greeted with
relief and enthusiasm by fans and critics, grateful
for another album that, like Low or Station to
Station, offered elements of challenge and mystery.
The feelings of gratitude eventually evaporated,
with the very same material criticised as pompous,
dogmatic and dull. The worst Tin Machine songs

did indeed deserve that description many were

assemblages of blues clichs, while the cover of
Working Class Hero is turgid and monotonous.
All the same, some of the material was Bowies
best in years: Prisoner of Love, obviously
Pixies-influenced, still sound fresh today; Run is
haunting despite its resemblance to Dont Fear the
Reaper, while I Cant Read is simply
spellbinding Bowies most emotionally affecting
song of the decade. Outside of those gems, though,
the album is hard to love which was quite
possibly Bowies intention, for the band
apparently worked on more commercial,
memorable songs which never made the final edit,
presumably because Tin Machine were designed
primarily as a scorched-earth policy to wipe out
the memory of eighties Bowie.

Tin Machine II
Recorded: October 1989 and March 1991; Studio
301, Sydney, and A&M, Los Angeles, CA.

Released: Victory, September 1991.

Chart Peak: 23 (UK); 126 (US).
Key Personnel: Reeves Gabrels (gtr); Tony Sales
(bs); Hunt Sales (dms).
Producers: Tin Machine, Tim Palmer and Hugh
Padgham.
Released as the enthusiasm for Tin Machine was
already fading outside diehard fans, Tin Machine
II exhibited exactly the same virtues and
drawbacks as its predecessors each of them
magnified. Most of the album was prosaic,
predictable rock n roll, and if anyone was bored
by the bluesy jams of the first album, they could
hardly be enthused by hearing Hunt Sales, an
excellent drummer, display his mediocre abilities
as a singer twice! Goodbye Mr. Ed, on the
other hand, was a beautiful song, destined to
become a lost classic.

Black Tie White Noise

Recorded:
1992;
Mountain,
Montreux,
Switzerland, and 38Fresh and Hit Factory, NYC.
Released: Savage Records, April 1993.
Chart Peak: 1 (UK); 39 (US).
Key Personnel: Pugi Bell, Sterling Campbell
(dms); Barry Campbell, John Regan (bs); Nile
Rodgers (gtr); Richard Hilton, Philippe Saisse,
Richard Tee (kbds); plus guests including Lester
Bowie (tpt), Mick Ronson (gtr, I Feel Free),
Mike Garson (pno, Looking For Lester).
Producers: David Bowie and Nile Rodgers.
Bowies most commercially successful album for
years saw him being fted by a new generation of
fans and featured on the cover of youth-oriented
magazines alongside young guns like Britpop
pioneers Suede. Songs like the tough, edgy Jump
They Say, devoted to half-brother Terry, or the
stripped-down, taut Miracle Goodnight which
featured the welcome return of Bowie on sax
further heightened the sense of renaissance. But
there were plenty of cloying moments, too, such as
the cutesy Dont Let Me Down & Down

featuring David singing in a kind of Brixton

Caribbean patois and the general over-polite,
airbrushed sheen of the album means that, when it
disappeared from the shelves following the
bankruptcy of record label Savage, few bemoaned
its passing.

The Buddha of Suburbia

Recorded: circa September 1993; Mountain,
Montreux, Switzerland.
Released: Universal, December 1993.
Chart Peak: 87 (UK); (US).
Key Personnel: Erdal Kizilcay (gts, bs, kbds, tpt
etc.); David Richards (programming etc.); Mike
Garson (pno); Lenny Kravitz (gtr).
Producer: David Bowie and David Richards.
A rushed recording, assembled as an expanded
version of the themes Bowie and multiinstrumentalist Erdal Kizilcay had conjured up for
Hanif Kureishis BBC film, The Buddha of

Suburbia featured much the same collection of

dance beats and melodies as Black Tie White
Noise. It demonstrated what could be achieved by
lack of time and lack of expectations, for it is
throughout a far more gripping album than its
predecessor. The title song is conventional
shimmering guitars and mid-paced drum machine
but displays a beguiling simplicity long absent
from Bowies work; its shot through with the
loneliness of suburbia and kicks into action with a
vintage, impassioned middle eight. Other songs
notably Strangers When We Meet are his
catchiest material in years, but never overblown,
while there is experimentation aplenty in the form
of grandiose or disturbing tracks like Sex and the
Church and South Horizon, as well as the
welcome return of pianist Mike Garson.
Undoubtedly Bowies best album in nearly a
decade, it was given a low-key, belated release by
Universal, limped out on to the schedules and
disappeared without trace.

1. Outside
Recorded: March November 1994; Mountain,
Montreux, Switzerland, and West Side, London.
January 1995; Hit Factory, NYC.
Released: ISO/Virgin, September 1995.
Chart Peak: 8 (UK); 21 (US).
Key Personnel: Reeves Gabrels (gtr); Brian Eno
(synths, treatments); Erdal Kizilcay (bs); Mike
Garson (pno); Sterling Campbell (dms); plus
Carlos Alomar, Kevin Armstrong (gtr) and Joey
Barron (dms).
Producers: David Bowie, Brian Eno and David
Richards.
Bowies long-awaited reunion with Eno is a
fascinating curates egg, developed over drawnout sessions which featured Bowie painting and the
musicians each allotted bizarre roles with much
of the action filmed by underprivileged kids. It
features the best of Bowie the courage, the
ability to spur musicians on to new creative heights
and the worst namely over-thinking, weighing

his material down with too many ideas. The album

is packed with significant songs the hard-bitten,
ominous The Hearts Filthy Lesson, Thru These
Architects Eyes and I Have Not Been to Oxford
Town but as a musical experience its hampered
by a ludicrous voiceover and the sense that its
maker was simply trying too hard.

Earthling
Recorded: 1996; Looking Glass Studios, NYC.
Released: BMG, February 1997.
Chart Peak: 6 (UK); 39 (US).
Key Personnel: Reeves Gabrels (gtr, synth,
programming); Mark Plati (programming etc.);
Mike Garson (pno); Gail Ann Dorsey (bs);
Zachary Alford (dms, perc).
Producers: David Bowie, Reeves Gabrels and
Mark Plati.
Bowie would be mocked as a dad at the disco
for this collection of mostly drum n bass tracks,

but there is a rush of excitement in the opening

moments which banishes cynicism: Little
Wonder features the return of cheeky, cockney
Bowie, its agile, sweet melody perfectly offset by
crunchy guitar and clattering drum machine like
Outsides Hallo Spaceboy, its a classic which
stands outside of style. But the trick soon wears
thin. Despite some innovative structures, like the
slightly loopy Looking for Satellites, and
ruthlessly efficient rock songs like Dead Man
Walking, the album soon develops into a drearily
repetitive loop, each chorus followed by two bars
of chattering drums and then a heavy guitar riff. As
a whole, the album is conservative and formulaic
even the self-referential title and Union Jack cover
seemed to indicate a jaded palate. Those faults
would have been forgivable had the album been
released two years earlier; its appearance just as
the nineties drum n bass craze was subsiding
suggested Bowie was content to surf on someone
elses wave, rather than making his own.

Hours
Recorded: April 1999; Seaview Studios,
Bermuda, and Looking Glass, NYC.
Released: ISO/Virgin International, October 1999.
Chart Peak: 5 (UK); 47 (US).
Key Personnel: Reeves Gabrels (gtr); Mark Plati
(bs); Mike Levesque and Sterling Campbell (dms);
Holly Palmer (backing vox, Thursdays Child).
Producers: David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels.
Refreshingly unadorned, sometimes hauntingly
intimate, Hours abandoned the high-tech cut and
paste of its predecessor for a production that was
distinctly downhome indeed, too much so, for the
real David Bowie is surely to be found more in
gloss and the artifice, than in dress-down
introspection. Although some material was thin
Whats Really Happening?, for instance, a
collaboration with fan Alex Grant, featuring a
melody lifted from You Keep Me Hanging On
songs like Seven and Thursdays Child were
finely crafted beautiful, even but the distinctive

Bowie voice that hed rediscovered on Earthling

was gone, to be replaced mainly with a Nick
Cave-ish throaty baritone. The third in a string of
stylistic about-turns, the album once again
suggested a return to the teenage Bowie struggling
to find a unique voice and rather like Space
Oddity, Hours, for all its finely crafted moments,
ended up being less than the sum of its parts.

Heathen
Recorded: Mostly August September 2001;
Allaire Studios, New York State, and Looking
Glass, NYC.
Released: ISO/Columbia, June 2002.
Chart Peak: 5 (UK); 14 (US).
Key Personnel: Tony Visconti (bs); Matt
Chamberlain (dms); David Torn (gtr); plus guests
including Pete Townshend and Dave Grohl.
Producers: David Bowie and Tony Visconti.
Bowies long-awaited reunion with Tony Visconti

was almost unassuming; gone were the intense

sonic textures, overlayered production and the
sense that Bowie had tried too hard. In its place
was simple, unassuming songwriting, a sense of
clarity and, above all, that wonderful voice, a
glory pretty much absent since Baal, Bowies last
work with Tony Visconti. On first listening, songs
like Slip Away and Everyone Says Hi perhaps
sound unadventurous, too tasteful and luxurious,
with their smooth fretless bass and luscious strings
but they have that niggling sense of unease that
draw the listener back in. Sunday and Heathen,
with their spiralling, disturbing instrumentation,
are enchanting, intriguing dramas, showcasing the
immense potential of Bowies reunion with his
best-known producer.

Reality
Recorded: January 2003, Looking Glass, NYC.
Released: ISO/Columbia, September 2003.
Chart Peak: 3 (UK); 29 (US).

Key Personnel: Gerry Leonard, Earl Slick, David

Torn (gtr); Mark Plati (bs); Sterling Campbell
(dms); Mike Garson (pno).
Producers: David Bowie and Tony Visconti.
Thirty years on from the albums that made his
name, Reality shows Bowie as the consummate
professional. The angst and paranoia is seemingly
consigned to the past, in favour of a reassuringly
familiar edginess: Pablo Picasso is, as youd
guess, quintessential art rock, The Modern
Lovers meets Bob Dylan; the throbbing Shell
Drive the Big Car is vaguely reminiscent of
Ashes to Ashes; Days is a conventional,
confessional love song (all you gave, you gave for
free I gave nothing in return). Its all intriguing,
but faintly familiar the outsider has finally come
in from the cold. Yet there is still darkness in this
heart, above all on the magnificent Bring Me the
Disco King: Mike Garsons majestic piano
echoes into the distance, Bowies voice is
foregrounded, more prominent than on any
previous recordings, revealing new depths of

experience and musicality. It holds out an

intriguing prospect that rather than simply revisit
his past, like so many of his peers, David Bowie
retains the potential to conjure up pleasures as yet
unknown.

NOTES AND SOURCES

Unless specifically referenced otherwise, all

sources refer to the authors own interviews. A full
list of interviewees follows at the end of this
section. Ive endeavoured to acknowledge every
significant quote and fact presented in this book; in
time I will post more background information
deleted scenes, alternate takes, but hopefully no
corrections at www.trynka.com.
1 When Im Five
Opening paragraph is based on interview with Eric
Schermerhorn. Description of Brixton draws on
recollections from Roger Bolden, who lived at 7,
Stansfield Road, David West, Linda Stagg, Sue
Larner, Linda McCartney, Barbara Gray, Suzanne
Goldschmitt and Val Wilmer (who lived nearby in
Streatham, and would later become a key expert on
Caribbean culture in Brixton). The problems for
mothers attempting to buy nappies and candles

around December 1947 were recorded by

Florence Speed, Grace Golden and Judy Haines
for their Mass-Observation diaries, and were
quoted in David Kynastons Austerity Britain
(Bloomsbury, 2007), a superb depiction of this
largely forgotten era, which was complemented by
Dominic Sandbrooks Never Had it So Good
(Abacus, 2006) and Peter Hennessys Having it So
Good (Allen Lane, 2006).
Information on the Jones familys tenure in
Brixton comes from electoral records in Lambeth
Archives. Background information on Davids
family comes from Ken Pitts Bowie: The Pitt
Report, and Peter and Leni Gillmans Alias David
Bowie, both of which drew on interviews with Pat
Antoniou; information on Haywood Jones
Barnardos career was supplied by Dorothy
Howes at the charity; helpful recollections of
Peggy were provided by her friend Aubrey
Goodchild.
Early Bromley and Burnt Ash memories: Max
Batten, John Barrance, Richard Comben, Susan
Hill, Gill Hymas, Jan Powling, Peter Prickett; ex-

Bromley Tech pupils and friends who all offered

helpful insights include Mike Bassett, Chris
Britton, Nick Brooks, Peter Davidson, Greg
DSouza, John Edmonds, Pete Goodchild, Cary
Granger, John Kendall, Len Outridge, Colin
Ovenden, Brian Payne, Howard Phillips, Alan
Reader, Andy Twiner, Adrian White and Keith
Wilkinson. Davids Quatermass recollections, and
later quotes on his early recording-buying habits,
come from his 2006 Nokia Music Recommenders
story. Everyone finds empathy in a nutty family is
from Davids 1976 Playboy interview with
Cameron Crowe. The conclusion in the final
paragraph that George Underwood, rather than
David, was the Boy Most Likely To comes from
many Bromley kids who remember his presence on
the stage, rather than Davids; as yet another
contemporary, Roger Bevan, puts it, George was
the singer, we all remember his Elvis impressions
and everyone reckoned he was going to be big.
2 Numero Uno, Mate!
Main sources include George Underwood, who

was interviewed for a MOJO feature on the

recording of Liza Jane, Geoff MacCormack,
Dorothy Bass, Les Conn, David Hadfield and Dick
Taylor. Quotes on Davids job at Nevin D. Hirst
from Mat Snows interview for Q, 1995. Davids
recollections of hanging out with Marc Bolan from
are Paul Du Noyers MOJO interview, July 2002.
This interview, and Du Noyers later thoughts and
insightful comments, can be found at his website,
www.pauldunoyer.com. The date of The King
Bees public debut, and other details, come from
John Blooms Its No Sin to Make a Profit (W.H.
Allen, 1970). Special thanks to Dorothy Bass,
whose diary of those early days was hugely helpful
in pinning down The King Bees live dates, and
who has recorded a typical week in a Bromley
teens life as follows: Monday: R&B at the
Bromley Court Hotel or the Marquee; Tuesday:
R&B at the 100 Club; Wednesday: R&B/Jazz at
the Court or Folk at the Star & Garter (Bromley
High Street); Thursday: R&B at the Marquee or
Trad at the Court; Friday: R&B at the Bell or the
Court or Folk at Catford Bridge (presumably a pub

in Catford); Saturday: Modern Jazz at the Marquee.

3 Thinking About Me
The Manish Boys section relies on recollections
from band members Bob Solly, Paul Rodriguez,
Woolf Byrne, Johnny Flux and Mick Whitehead;
special thanks to Bob and Woolf for the access to
their diaries and cuttings. Lower Third
interviewees were Denis Taylor and Graham
Rivens. Special thanks to Kenny Bell, who invited
me to a Pinot Grigio-fuelled Denmark Street
reunion which featured many key figures of that
era, including Mike Berry, Terry King and Simon
White. Terry King and John Singer provided
invaluable insights into the background of Ralph
Horton; other key interviewees were Shel Talmy,
Wayne Bardell, Kenney Jones, Jeff Dexter and
Tony Hatch. Information on Marc Bolans early
career is from Mark Paytress wonderful book
Bolan: The Rise and Fall of a 20th Century
Superstar (Omnibus, 2006).
4 Laughing Gnome

Principal sources, in addition to those detailed for

the previous chapter, are Ken Pitt, Hugh Mendl,
Mike Vernon, Tony Hall, Derek Dek Fearnley,
John Hutch Hutchinson, Alan Mair, Tom Parker
and Neil Slaven. Most dates quoted come from
Ken Pitts paperwork and Decca records. Special
thanks to The Riot Squad, one of the most
mysterious bands ever to play behind David; I was
treated to an impromptu Squad reunion with Bob
Flag, George Butcher and Del Roll in an Essex
pub, which gave me a wonderful insight into those
carefree, zany days. Thanks to Paolo Hewitt, Jeff
Dexter and Graham Marsh for sharing their
thoughts on Mod, and Marcus Gray for sharing his
insights into the Deram/Essex connection, and also
pointing out the Ian Brady and Myra Hindley
references in Please Mr. Gravedigger.
5 I Wish Something Would Happen
Principal interviewees: Chris Welch, Ken Pitt,
Hugh Mendl, Tony Visconti, Steve Chapman,
Lindsay Kemp, Mick Farren, Gordon Rose,
Michael Garrett, Jeff Dexter, Vernon Dewhurst,

Ray Stevenson, John Hutchinson. The story of how

David discovered Jacques Brel via Lesley Duncan
comes from Davids Nokia Recommends: Sounds
of My Universe interview (although David
doesnt mention Lesley by name). Davids he got
all sniffy quote about Marc Bolan is from Paul Du
Noyers Bowie interview, MOJO, July 2002;
Davids description of Terrys schizophrenic fit
during the Cream show at the Bromel Club comes
from his NME interview, March 1993.
6 Check Ignition
Main sources: Ray Stevenson, Keith Christmas,
Alan Mair, Tony Visconti, Calvin Mark Lee,
Simon Hayes, Mark Pritchett, Angie Bowie, Terry
Cox, John Cambridge, Tim Renwick, Gron Kelly,
Olav Wyper, David Bebbington, Jeff Griffin. The
account of how the Philips album was recorded
cross-references the memories of Cambridge,
Renwick, Christmas and Tony Visconti. The
authors own interview with Gus Dudgeon has
been greatly improved with a transcript of a
longer, more detailed interview conducted by Fred

Dellar in March 1978. Bowie fans will notice I

dont mention Tony Viscontis anecdote about how
Mick Ronson attended the final overdubs for the
Philips album, principally because Visconti
believed Cambridge had brought Mick to the
session and John is adamant that he did not.
7 All The Madmen
Opening description is based mainly on interviews
with Mark Pritchett, whose mother Donna was
housekeeper at Haddon Hall. The description of
Pitts visit to the session for The Prettiest Star
derives from my interview with David Bebbington,
cross-referenced with Tony Visconti; Bebbington
also attended the Arts Lab session at which David
first mentioned his half-brother, Terry. Early
history of Mick Ronson is based on accounts by
Keith Herd who recorded The Rats first
sessions Rats bassist Keith Cheesman, Rats
drummer John Cambridge and Ronno bassist
Trevor Bolder. Other sources for the chapter
include Jeff Griffin, Ray Stevenson, Laurence
Myers, Olav Wyper and Ken Scott whose

account is crucial because it confirms Viscontis

suggestions that he and Ronson were solely
responsible for major sections of The Man Who
Sold the World. Lastly, Mick Farrens contention
that David quoted Kahlil Gibran or Nietzsche on
the basis of reading book jackets is confirmed by
Dai Davies, who spent many late nights discussing
philosophy with David the following year.
8 Kooks
Main interviews for this chapter: Bob Grace, Bill
Harry, Anya Wilson, Herbie Flowers, Henry
Spinetti, Robin McBride, Ron Oberman, John
Mendelssohn, Ken Scott, Trevor Bolder, Leee
Childers, Tony Zanetta and Robin Mayhew. Much
of the information on Tony Defries comes from
David Thompson, who collaborated with Tony on
an abandoned autobiography; his information was
augmented by interviews with Laurence Myers
who is often written out of the story and Olav
Wyper. Tony Viscontis account of his dealings
with Tony Defries come from his book, Bowie,
Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy (HarperCollins,

2007); Angie Bowies description of Zowies

birth is based on her account in Backstage Passes.
Details of how Davids new deal left him with an
obligation to Essex Music ultimately settled with
several Scary Monsters songs, including Up the
Hill Backwards were provided by Simon Platz.
The story of David meeting Doug Yule and
thinking he was Lou Reed was described in
Record Collector magazine, September 2001.
Robert Kensell, a Sombrero regular, gave a great
account of the club. Special thanks to Mark
Pritchett, who provided unique insights into
Bowies songwriting during the most crucial
period of his career. Evidence that David initially
intended to book Herbie Flowers and Tim
Renwick for his Kooks BBC session came from
Jeff Griffin, who has a booking sheet dated just one
week earlier, which names them in the band lineup, replaced by the future Spiders at the last
moment.
9 Over the Rainbow
Main sources for David and Defries trip to RCA

are Danny Fields, Iggy Pop, Lisa Robinson and

Tony Zanetta. Throughout this period, Tony Zanetta
is an excellent, objective source, and Im grateful
to him for subjecting to perhaps a dozen
interviews. Zanetta and Henry Edwards book
Stardust (Michael Joseph, 1986) has been widely
criticised by Nicholas Pegg, among others but
while its coverage of the other eras is flaky, it
gives a brilliant overview of the MainMan years.
For the runup to the Im gay and I always have
been Melody Maker interview, Dai Davies
perhaps Davids closest, most objective confidant
of the period was an inexhaustible, definitive
source of insights. It was also Dai Davies, as one
of those dealing closely with Ronson, who points
out that his misgivings about The Spiders
makeover were more about muso credibility than
homophobia in Hull (which of course did, and
does, exist). The fact that Somewhere Over the
Rainbow was also plagiarised for The White
Cliffs of Dover was first pointed out by
musicologists interviewed for a Radio 4
documentary in October 2009, dedicated to the

wartime anthem (incidentally, there are no

bluebirds over Dover). Barry Bethes quote
courtesy of Mike Berry. Other interviews: Leee
Childers, Tom Parker, Kris Needs, Will Palin,
Trevor Bolder, Ken Scott, Mark Pritchett, Robin
Mayhew, Jeff Dexter, Dave Marsh, Herbie
Flowers, Suzi Fussey, Matthew Fisher, Lindsay
Kemp. Spider Special recipe is courtesy of Will
Palin. Ian Hunter interview is courtesy of Kris
Needs. David Bowie wrote about The Legendary
Stardust Cowboy and Vince Taylor, one
inspiration for Ziggy, in the edition of MOJO
which he guest-edited in July 2002; Davids
account of the creation of the Ziggy jumpsuits
comes from Moonage Daydream: The Life and
Times of Ziggy Stardust by Bowie and Mick Rock
(Palazzo, 2005).
10 Battle Cries and Champagne
The account of the Cleveland aftershow, the
writing of The Jean Genie and the problems
recording Panic in Detroit come from Trevor
Bolder. Main sources are as for the previous

chapter, with the addition of Scott Richardson,

James Williamson, John Hutch Hutchinson and
Ava Cherry. Descriptions of Davids boat trip, and
attendance at the Bruce Springsteen show, are
described by Geoff MacCormack in his book From
Station to Station (Genesis, 2007). Special thanks
to Rodney Bingenheimer for putting me in touch
with six of the Rodneys English Disco regulars,
including Kathy Heller, Nancy McCrado and Lori
Madox. The effects of Scientology on the MainMan
organisation were described primarily by Trevor
Bolder and Robin Mayhew. The Iggy quote about
rolling my eyes comes from Cliff Jones
interview with Iggy in 1996. (Iggy was always
much more polite about his ex-buddy during my
interviews with him.) Davids highly symbolic
quote, illustrating just how early his marriage
seemed doomed, comes from Mick Rocks
Moonage Daydream. Ian Hunters holding up
well observations about Bowie, and some other
dates, come from his excellent Diary of a Rock n
Roll Star. Additional research on this chapter,
specifically the Mike Garson interview, is by one-

time Mott The Hoople fanclub organiser, Kris

Needs.
11 Star
Descriptions of the US routine are based on
interviews with Bolder, Zanetta, Mayhew, Fussey,
Davies and Hutchinson, augmented with dates and
references
from
Zanettas Stardust,
MacCormacks Station to Station and Mick
Ro c ks Moonage Daydream. Details of The
Spiders attempts to sign to Columbia are based on
Trevor Bolders account; Davids seduction of
Lulu, with Angie Bowie in pursuit, was witnessed
by John Hutchinson, and recently confirmed by
Lulu in her autobiography I Dont Want to Fight
(Time Warner, 2003). Other sources include
interviewees from the previous chapter, plus Ken
Scott, Scott Richardson, Jayne County, Mark
Pritchett, Hugh Attwooll and Ava Cherry.
Descriptions of the interior of Oakley Street come
from its decorators, Mick Gillah, Chris Goodchild
and Aubrey Goodchild.

12 The Changing isnt Free

Davids relationship with Mick Jagger was
sketched out primarily by Ava Cherry, Scott
Richardson and the pairs agent, Maggie Abbott.
Diamond Dogs description, and especially the
genesis of Rebel Rebel, comes from Alan Parker
and Herbie Flowers. Especial thanks to the everdiplomatic Herbie for an objective view of a
controversy which has fascinated musicians for
years, including Nile Rodgers, who points out, I
could never believe it was David played that
guitar. Other sources are as for the previous
chapter, plus Wayne Bardell, Keith Christmas and
Carlos Alomar. The Apollo dates were supplied
by the Frank Schiffman Apollo Theatre Collection
thanks to Christine S. Windheuser of the NMAH
Archives Center. David went to at least two
Apollo shows, one around 18 September, with
comic Frankyln Ajaye, The Spinners and The
Temptations. Richard Pryor and The Main
Ingredient shared a bill on 26 April with Inner
Voices, who were out on prison leave. The
archives contain brief assessments of each

performance: Richard Pryor, still to achieve

widespread fame on Saturday Night Live, is
pronounced: Dirty, dirty! But funny, funny!
Absolute control of audience Excellent!
Descriptions of Norman Fisher come from Ava
Cherry, Cherry Vanilla and Davids recollections
on Nokia Recommenders. Davids Nuremberginfluenced lighting scheme was recalled by Mark
Pritchett. Other details of New York in 1974 come
f r o m The Ossie Clark Diaries (Bloomsbury,
1998). Davids soul record collection was
detailed by Geoff MacCormack, Ava Cherry and
Harvey Kubernick.
13 Make Me Break Down and Cry
Key sources include Ava Cherry, Tony Zanetta,
Carlos Alomar, Tony Visconti, Iggy Pop and May
Pang. Details of Bowies position as employee
of MainMan come from his contract dated 31
March, 1972. Terry ONeills account of Davids
meeting with Liz Taylor conflicts with Zanettas
version, which is that Liz Taylor first met David
when she arrived at a rehearsal. Zanettas version

is in Stardust, p276. Description of the Hyatt

Regency bust relies on MacCormacks account in
Station to Station. Reports of Iggys reunion with
David come from Ron Asheton, and others,
interviewed for the authors biography of Iggy,
Open Up and Bleed (Sphere, 2008). Sources for
the recording of Fame are Carlos Alomar (who
mentions here, for the first time to my knowledge,
how David played a key guitar riff on the song),
Eddie Kramer and May Pang. Carlos Alomar does
not remember Lennon singing Shame, Shame,
Shame; however, May Pang contends that I was
the only one not on drugs and thats what
happened. Her version is supported by the fact
that the songs descending melody, first heard at
3.01, is essentially identical to Shame, Shame,
Shames chorus. The simplest explanation is that
David heard John singing the line, but Carlos
didnt. Thanks to Keith Badman, author of The
Beatles After the Break Up (Omnibus Press, 1999)
who pinned down Pauls arrival in New York as
10 January, and places the Fame session as circa
1520 January. Defries share of Bowies work up

to 1982 was first uncovered by the Gillmans, who

had access to MainMain paperwork and put the
relevant date as 30 September, 1982. However,
Davids original contract, as mentioned above,
dates from 31 March, 1982.
14 White Stains
Main sources: Ava Cherry, Maggie Abbott, Cherry
Vanilla, Geoff MacCormack, Glenn Hughes, Earl
Slick, Iggy Pop, James Williamson, Carlos
Alomar, Ben Edmonds. For this chapter, I owe a
huge debt to writer Rob Hughes, who shared all
the interview transcripts for his excellent Uncut
article on The Man Who Fell to Earth. This
helped give me a vital sense of the wider context
behind the movie; it was vital, too, for Roeg and
Litvinoffs accounts of what happened to Bowies
soundtrack for the movie. All the quotes from
Candy Clark, Nicholas Roeg and Si Litvinoff come
from Robs transcripts. Thanks also to Joel
McIver, Glenn Hughes biographer, for sharing
information and putting me in touch with Glenn.
Slash quote is from Slash: The Autobiography

(Harper, 2008). Paul Buckmaster quotes come

from his interview with David Buckley in the
MOJO Bowie birthday special, January 2007.
Thanks to Gary Lachman for providing extensive
background information on Bowie and the occult.
The obvious influence of Trevor Ravenscrofts
The Spear of Destiny and other texts, and Bowies
avowed interest in Gnosticism, has inspired a huge
amount of sometimes hilarious background
reading. The net is a good place to investigate
these theories. One amusing fantasist, contacted by
this author and quoted widely elsewhere, claimed
to have intimate knowledge of Bowies early
involvement with characters like Stephen Ward
and other members of the Profumo circle.
Disappointingly, such conspiracy theorists omit
facts that could shore up their batty fantasies. Some
of Bowies key works are in fact intimately
connected with a line of occult power running
across London mapped by Nazi theorists which
led to Omphalos, the spiritual centre of the British
Empire,
according
to
the
London
Psychogeographical Society. Space Oddity was

first recorded in Deptford Creek, on this line of

power where Christopher Marlowe was
allegedly sacrificed by dark forces involving the
magician John Dee and Ziggy Stardust was
rehearsed nearby in Greenwich, or Omphalos,
itself. The line of power also bisects Bromley
Road. I hope an expert will investigate this subject
more deeply.
More seriously, there is a brilliant analysis of
the concepts invoked in Station to Station by the
late Ian MacDonald, reprinted in The Peoples
Music (Pimlico, 2003). Gary Lachman explores
the 1960s history of the occult in Turn Off Your
Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of
the Age of Aquarius (Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002).
Information on Davids involvement with Wally
Elmlark comes from Cherry Vanilla, who goes on
to say that after writing down the telephone
number, David promised hed produce Cherrys
next album. Bowie said, Ill be in New York in a
week Ill see you then. I was floating around on
cloud nine Bowies going to produce my record!
The next week Im at Norman Fishers and Norman

gave this party for Bowie the top of the

fireplace was all white with coke. I walked up to
David and said, When are we going to talk about
the record? He said something to me in German,
turned away and I didnt see him again for years.
Deep Purple live dates come from
http://www.deeppurpleliveindex.com/.
15 Ghosts in the Echo Chambers
Main interviews: Andrew Kent, Iggy Pop, Carlos
Alomar, Laurent Thibault, Pierre Calamel, Marc
Zermati, Philippe Auliac, Roy Young, Tony
Visconti, Angie Bowie, Kuelan Nguyen, Phil
Palmer, Eduard Meyer. Davids intention to record
with Iggy at Musicland was first mentioned in
Iggys interview with Punk Magazine in March
1976. My thanks to Christophe Geudin, who
interviewed Laurent Thibault for Recording
Musicien magazine, exchanged ideas with me and
helped me make several breakthroughs in
understanding The Idiot. Bowies confused
communications with Michael Rother were first
revealed in Tobias Rthers Helden: David Bowie

und Berlin (Rogner und Bernhard, 2008). Brian

Eno quotes are from Stephen Daltons Uncut
interview, more background on Eno comes from
On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of
Brian Eno by David Sheppard and Enos insightful
interview with Ian MacDonald, NME, November
1977.
16 Helden
Opening section is based on an interview with
Tony Visconti; the description of a typical day in
Berlin comes from Iggy Pop, augmented by the
recollections of Edu Meyer, one of the recipients
of Bowie and Iggys surprise visits. Main
interviews: Angie Bowie, Edu Meyer, Hunt Sales,
Tony Sales, Esther Friedmann, Ricky Gardiner,
Kris Needs, Carlos Alomar. Davids quotes on
the sense of yearning for a future we knew would
never come to pass are from Uncut. Thanks to
David Sheppard for sharing his thoughts on this
period in Enos artistic life; Enos quotes are from
Ian MacDonalds NME interview. The section
covering Bowies appearance on Marc derives

from interviews with Keith Altham, Jeff Dexter,

Chris Welch and Cliff Wright. Information on
Marcs fatal car crash comes from Mark Paytresss
research.
17 I Am Not a Freak
Main sources for Davids later days in Berlin are
Edu Meyer, Esther Friedmann and Klaus Krger.
Stage and Lodger sources: Adrian Belew, Carlos
Alomar, Simon House and Tony Visconti,
augmented by Sean Mayes We Can Be Heroes:
Life On Tour with David Bowie . Just a Gigolo
background was aided by Michael Watts feature
for Melody Maker, February 1978. The Lou Reed
encounter is based primarily on Chuck Hammers
recollections. Other interviewees: Barry Andrews,
Steve Strange. Primary Elephant Man interviews:
Ken Ruta, Jeanette Landis. The description of
Davids reaction to John Lennons murder comes
primarily from May Pang.
18 Snapshot of a Brain
Duncan Jones talked about his front-room viewing

sessions of Star Wars in the New York Times , 3

June, 2009. Davids bodyguard and stalkeravoiding routine were described by Kevin
Armstrong and others. Davids Ive gotten closer
to her quote about Peggy comes from his
interview with Timothy White, Musician, May
1983. Figures for Mitchelsons divorce settlement
for Angie come Ladies Man: The Life and Trials
of Marvin Mitchelson by John A. Jenkins (St
Martins Press, 1992); Angies comment that
David used his millions to poison Zowie against
me comes from the Daily Mail, which has
featured Angie many times over the years; Davids
As much insight into the human condition as a
walnut quote comes from the same source. Brian
Mays It was hard because you had four very
precocious boys quote comes from Mark Blakes
interview for the MOJO Special of 2008. The
Baal section derives from interviews with Louis
Marks and Dominic Muldowney, plus John
Willetts fascinating essay, Brecht for the Media,
1982. Jeremy Thomas and Ryuichi Sakamoto
quotes come from the Making of documentary

on the special edition of Merry Christmas Mr

Lawrence. Other interviews: Esther Friedmann,
Carol Clerk, Tommy Shannon, Gary Lachman, Nile
Rodgers, Gary Gersh, Hugh Stanley-Clarke.
19 On the Other Side
Principal interviews: Tommy Shannon, Frank
Simms, Earl Slick, Charles Shaar Murray, Hugh
Padgham, Julien Temple, Kevin Armstrong,
Matthew Seligman, Clare Hirst, Thomas Dolby,
Iggy Pop, Nancy Jeffries, Erdal Kizilcay, Edu
Meyer, Tony Horkins. Bowiedownunder.com had
a fascinating, useful account of the filming of the
Lets Dance and China Girl videos. Thanks to
David Buckley, who put me in touch with Hugh
Padgham and whose Bowie biography, Strange
Fascination (Virgin, 1999), gives a superb
account of the making of Tonight. For Open Up
and Bleed, I believed the assurances of Iggys
management that Davids tale of Iggy stamping on a
fans head was apocryphal; now, thanks to Ed
Hunter and Noel Tepper, we know the fan was
Lucille Reed of Poughkeepsie, who won a

settlement from Iggys lawyers. Most of the quotes

from Pat Antoniou come from pieces in the Sun
and the Daily Mirror, throughout spring 1985,
accessed via the British Library at Colindale.
Records of Davids plans to set up his own
production stable with Bill Laswell came from
paperwork in the possession of Les Conn.
20 Its My Life So Fuck Off
Principal interviews: Kevin Armstrong, Reeves
Gabrels, Tony Sales, Hunt Sales, Eric
Schermerhorn, Adrian Belew, Erdal Kizilcay,
Emma Bannister, Nile Rodgers. Much of the
information on David and Imans first meeting
comes from (where else?) Hello! magazine. The
story of Davids trip to Wales first appeared in the
South Wales Echo, September 1992. Davids
quote, the truth is I was not convinced by the
motivations behind this event, comes from Rock
Et Folk magazine, December 1998. Interviews
around the Mick Ronson tribute include Suzi
Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Ken Scott. Ronsons
quote comes from an interview I did with him for

International Musician magazine in February

1989, in which it was obvious he was a little sniffy
about Bowie but had no complaints. In the same
interview, Ronson and I discussed whether
Davids switch to a deeper, more baritone voice
was influenced by Iggy. Ronsons conclusion was
Sound like Iggy? He wanted to be Iggy! Hanif
Kureishi tells his own story of The Buddha of
Suburbia at hanifkureishi.com. His site also
contains his 1999 story, Strangers When We
Meet.
21 The Hearts Filthy Lesson
This chapter would not have been possible without
the inspiration, help and persistence of Kris
Needs, who did the bulk of the research on the
Outside sessions, and conducted the detailed,
insightful interviews with Reeves Gabrels, Mike
Garson and Mark Plati. Other sources for this
chapter: Kevin Armstrong, Erdal Kizilcay, Tony
Visconti (augmented with material from The
Brooklyn Boy), Carlos Alomar, Thomas Dolby,
Mark Cooper, Max Glenn. The background on

Bowie Bonds is sourced primarily from court

records and judgements in the Pullman v.
Prudential and Zysblat case, decided in favour of
the latter by Supreme Court judge Ira Gammerman
in judgement 600772/01, July 2003. Duncan Jones
career was summarised in, among others, the New
York Times , June 2009. Over the period in
question,
Davids
webchats
at
wwww.davidbowie.com provide consistent, often
hilarious insights into his family life and music.
Bowies account of the making of Heathen comes
from his excellent interview for Livewire, 16 June,
2002.
22 The Houdini Principle
The title of this chapter, and much of the reasoning,
derives from Julien Temples conversations with
David early in 1985. Bowie fans will also
recognise a resonance with his intriguing
performance as Nikolai Tesla in Christopher
Nolans The Prestige a movie whose title and
plot revolve around the notion of making a
magnificent exit. Fan quotes are posted on the

YouTube video of the Fashion Rocks Show, 8

September, 2005. The pregnant pause theory was
advanced by, among others, Nicholas Pegg in the
MOJO Special of 2007; the announcement both of
Bowies appearance at Highline, and his
cancellation,
appeared
on david-bowie.com.
David confided his estrangement from Iggy to
Robert Phoenix on gettingit.com, October 1999.
Details of Defries disastrous investment in the
Cayman Islands was reported on wikileaks, 3
March, 2008. Information on Defries planned
autobiography Gods and Gangsters, come from his
press release of 2008. Duncan Jones quote about
his relationship with his father comes from the
Daily Telegraph, 14 July, 2009. Ian McCulloch
quote from MOJO, issue 100. Other interviews:
Julien Temple, Mike Garson, Ian Gittins, George
Underwood, Momus, Charles Francis, Nicolas
Godin.
General Sources
UK chart positions are sourced throughout from
The Q Encyclopedia of Rock Stars; US positions

from Billboard. I also used the index of UK chart

runs at polyhex.com. My invaluable source for the
various brands of cigarettes favoured by Bowie
over the years was Jarvis Cockers interview with
David for The Big Issue, December 1997.
Bowienet.com,
bowiewonderworld.com,
5years.com,
bowiegoldenyears.com,
teenagewildlife.com
and www.illustrated-dbdiscography.nl were invaluable throughout.
Background Reading
All written sources used in the book are cited
within the notes. The following books made for
invaluable Bowie background reading and
reference.
Alias David Bowie, Peter and Leni Gillman
(Hodder & Stoughton, 1986)
Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side With
David Bowie, Angie Bowie with Patrick
Carr (Orion, 1993)
Bowie, Jerry Hopkins (Macmillan, 1985)
Bowie: The Pitt Report, Ken Pitt (Omnibus, 1985)

The Complete David Bowie, Nicholas Pegg

(Reynolds & Hearn, 2000)
The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music
19721993, Nick Kent (Penguin, 1994)
David Bowie: A Chronology, Kevin Cann
(Vermilion, 1983)
David Bowie: Moonage Daydream, David
Thompson (Plexus, 1989)
Diary of a Rock n Roll Star , Ian Hunter (IMP,
1996)
Free Spirit, Angie Bowie (Mushroom, 1981)
Johnny Thunders: In Cold Blood, Nina Antonia
(Jungle, 1997)
The Life and Death of Andy Warhol , Victor
Bockris (Bantam, 1989)
Lou Reed: The Biography, Victor Bockris
(Hutchinson, 1994)
Low, Hugo Wilcken (Continuum, 2005)
Mick Ronson: The Spider with the Platinum Hair,
Weird and Gilly (IMP, 2003)
New York Rocker , Gary Valentine (Sidgwick &
Jackson, 2002)
On Some Faraway Beach: The Life and Times of

Brian Eno, David Sheppard (Orion, 2008)

The Q Encyclopedia of Rock Stars (Dorling
Kindersley, 1996)
Rebel Heart, Bebe Buell (St Martins Press, 2001)
Strange Fascination: David Bowie The Definitive
Story, David Buckley (Virgin, 1999)
We Can be Heroes: Life on Tour with David
Bowie, Sean Mayes (IMP, 1999)
Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and
Excess, Danny Sugerman (William Morrow &
Co, 1989)
All magazines and periodicals quoted within the
text are detailed in the notes. The principal
magazines used for background reading include
Billboard, Circus, Creem, Disc, East Village
Other, Denim Delinquent, End Times,
Entertainment World, Evo, Fifth Estate, Fusion,
Gay Power, Goldmine, GQ, Guitarist,
International Musician, Jazz & Pop, Q, Melody
Maker, MOJO, Motorbooty, Motor City Rock and
Roll News, NME, Pavilion, Phonograph Record
Magazine, Record Mirror , Record World , Rock

Scene, Rolling Stone, Sounds, Stereo Review,

Strange Things, The Guitar Magazine, Trouser
Press, Variety, Village Voice , Wire, Zig Zag.
Copies of The Times, The Sunday Times, the Sun
and the Daily Mirror were all accessed courtesy
of the British Library reading rooms. Thanks to Q,
MOJO, Johnny Black, Fred Dellar and Richard
Morton Jack for use of their archives.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As ever, my deepest thanks go to Julian Alexander,
an oasis of calm and good sense in a changing
world, as well as a rigorous commentator in the
earliest days of this project. Thanks also to my US
agent, Sarah Lazin, for her acumen and
encouragement.
I also count myself very lucky to work with
Antonia Hodgson and John Parsley, of Little,
Brown UK and US respectively. Both of them
shared complementary, multiple, sustained
insights, without which this would not have been
the same book. They were also good company, and
I look forward to another Bowie tour into the
nether regions of Soho (and his personal life) soon.
Others deserving of thanks are probably too many
to mention, but a brief list would include Martin
Aston, Louis Barfe, Mark Blake, Tony Beasty,
Kenny Bell, Johnny Black, Romain Blondel, Billy
Bragg, Anne Bourgeois-Vignon, Dave Burrluck,

Chris Charlesworth, Fred Dellar, Peter Doggett,

Roger Dopson, Richard England, Miles Evans,
Eve Fegyveres, Carl Ferris, Marcus Fuhrmann,
Ken Garner, Debra Geddes, Pat Gilbert, Marcus
Gray, Paul Guimaraes, Sue Harris, Paulo Hewitt,
Graham Marsh, Martin Hopewell, Laurie Hornsby,
Dorothy Howes, Jim Irvin, Leonora Jackaman,
Graham Johnson, Kieron Jones, Ashley Kahn,
Terry King, Colin MacKenzie, Spencer Leigh, Ian
Muir, John Myer, Kris Needs, Mark Paytress,
Christopher Porter, John Reed, Carlton
Sandercock, Josh Saunders, Joe Smith, Mat Snow,
Bob Solly, Dave Thompson, Geoff Travis, Gerald
Wallis, Dorian Wathen, Cliff Watkins, David
Wells, Marc Zermati. Thanks also to all the staff at
MOJO magazine, especially Mark Blake, Jenny
Bulley, Danny Eccleston, Phil Alexander, Ian
Harrison and Andrew Male for their help and
forbearance. Not to forget Chris Ingham MOJOs
Doctor Rock for sharing thoughts on Bowies
songwriting.
People who offered help with the Iggy book, which

also proved pivotal in this book, include

Christophe Geudin, who helped me locate Laurent
Thibault, and Tony Zanetta, whose patience
seemed inexhaustible. Thanks, once more, to my
schoolmate Nick Hunter, the only fifteen-year-old
kid I knew who had a copy of Bowies Santa
Monica bootleg, from which we worked out our
own (dreadful) version of Waiting for the Man.
David Buckley was a confidant on my Iggy book,
who should have been a rival on this book, but was
as helpful and generous with his insights as ever.
Kat Johnson, both on this book and Open Up and
Bleed, did a heroic job of helping with
transcription. Most profoundly, my everlasting
thanks and appreciation to Lucy and Curtis; as
mentioned at the Trafalgar Tavern, in the last ditch
I will always think of you.
Thanks to all my interviewees for sharing their
time and insights. They are: Maggie Abbott, Carlos
Alomar, Keith Altham, Keith Andrew, Barry
Andrews, Bernie Andrews, Annie Apple, Kevin
Armstrong, Ron Asheton, Hugh Attwooll, Philippe

Auliac, Jim Avery, Emma Bannister, Wayne

Bardell, John Barrance, Mike Bassett, Max Batten,
David Bebbington, Kenny Bell, Adrian Belew,
Mike Berry, Rodney Bingenheimer, Roger Bolden,
Trevor Bolder, Angie Bowie, Stephen Braine,
Chris Britton, Nick Brooks, Bebe Buell, Rodney
Burbeck, George Butcher, Woolf Byrne, Pierre
Calamel, John Cale, John Cambridge, Steve
Chapman, Keith Cheesman, Ava Cherry, Leee
Childers, Keith Christmas, Carol Clerk, Richard
Comben, Les Conn, Mark Cooper, Jayne County,
Terry Cox, Sydney Curtis, Peter Davidson, Dai
Davies, Vernon Dewhurst, Jeff Dexter, Wolfgang
Diebeling, Thomas Dolby, Bryan Drew, Greg
DSouza, Gus Dudgeon, Ben Edmonds, John
Edmonds, John Edward (Johnny Flux), Robin
Eggar, Mick Farren, Derek Dek Fearnley, Danny
Fields, Matthew Fisher, Bob Flag, Herbie
Flowers, Kim Fowley, Charles Francis, Esther
Friedmann, Reeves Gabrels, Michael Garrett,
Mike Garson, Gary Gersh, Mick Gillah, Dana
Gillespie, Ian Gittins, Max Glenn, Nicolas Godin,
Suzanne Goldschmitt, Aubrey and Chris

Goodchild, Bob Grace, Cary Granger, Shaun

Greenfield, Barbara Gray, Jeff Griffin, Tony Hall,
David Hadfield, Bill Harry, Tony Hatch, Simon
Hayes, Kathy Heller, Keith Herd, Susan Hill,
Clare Hirst, Gill Hymas, Chuck Hammer, Tony
Horkins, Simon House, Glenn Hughes, John
Hutch Hutchinson, Norman Ingram, Nancy
Jeffries, Kenney Jones, Graham Kelly, Lindsay
Kemp, John Kendall, Robert Kensell, Andrew
Kent, Terry King, Erdal Kizilcay, Eddie Kramer,
Klaus Krger, Harvey Kubernick, Gary Lachman,
Jeanette Landis, Sue Larner, Calvin Mark Lee,
Suzanne Liritis, Dorothy Bass Macedo, Lori
Madox, Alan Mair, Louis Marks, Dave Marsh,
Glenn Max, Linda McCartney, Nancy McCrado,
Geoff MacCormack, Robin McBride, Robin
Mayhew, John Mendelssohn, Hugh Mendl, Eduard
Meyer, Momus, Dominic Muldowney, Charles
Shaar Murray, Laurence Myers, Kuelan Nguyen,
Kris Needs, Ron Oberman, Len Outridge, Colin
Ovenden, Hugh Padgham, Will Palin, Phil Palmer,
May Pang, Alan Parker, Tom Parker, Brian Payne,
Les Payne, Howard Phillips, Ken Pitt, Mark Plati,

Simon Platz, Iggy Pop, Jan Powling, Peter Prickett,

Mark Pritchett, Alan Reader, Tim Renwick, Scott
Richardson, Graham Rivens, Lisa Robinson, Nile
Rodgers, Paul Rodriguez, Derek Del Roll, Suzi
Ronson, Gordon Rose, Ken Ruta, Hunt Sales, Tony
Sales, Carlton Sandercock, Eric Schermerhorn,
Ken Scott, Matthew Seligman, Tommy Shannon,
Harry Shapiro, Frank Simms, John Singer, Neil
Slaven, Earl Slick, Bob Solly, Henry Spinetti,
Linda Stagg, Hugh Stanley-Clarke, Ray Stevenson,
David Stopps, Steve Strange, Shel Talmy, Denis
Taylor, Dick Taylor, Julien Temple, Laurent
Thibault, Dave Thompson, Andy Twiner, Diana
Udall, George Underwood, Mike Vernon, Tony
Visconti, Chris Welch, David West, Adrian White,
Simon White, Mick Whitehead, Keith Wilkinson,
James Williamson, Val Wilmer, Anya Wilson,
Jonathan Wingate, Cliff Wright, Olav Wyper, Roy
Young, Tony Zanetta, Marc Zermati.
Sadly, since I started work on this book and its
predecessor, Open Up and Bleed, the following
interviewees have passed away: Ron Asheton, Les

Conn, Hugh Attwooll, Carol Clerk and Derek

Dek Fearnley. All of them were enthralling
raconteurs; I will miss speaking to them again, as I
will Ian MacDonald, always one of the most
thought-provoking writers on MOJO, and Mick
Ronson, who was unfailingly tolerant with me as a
star-struck, novice writer.

INDEX

Abbott, Maggie, 202, 229230, 240

Allaire studio (Catskills), 381382
Alomar, Carlos, 209210, 214, 222, 245, 248,
254, 337, 365, 372; Young Americans sessions,
214, 215, 224, 225; Station to Station sessions,
242, 243, 244; Low sessions, 259, 261, 262;
Heroes sessions, 273274, 275276; Isolar
II tour (1978), 286, 287, 288; Lodger sessions,
288, 289, 290; Serious Moonlight tour, 318,
319, 321; 1995 tour, 367, 368
Altham, Keith, 277278, 279, 280
Anger, Kenneth, 232, 235236
The Animals, 33, 43
Antoniou, Pat (ne Burns, aunt of DB), 10, 15, 75,
109, 110, 310, 311, 329, 380
Apollo moon landing (July 1969), 96, 100
Apollo Theater (Harlem, New York), 208
Armstrong, Janet, 332

Armstrong, Kevin, 330331, 332, 333, 334335,

340, 342, 344, 345346, 351, 365
art college system, 1920
Asano, Suchi, 323, 324, 334, 371
Asheton, Ron, 175, 258, 391
Attwooll, Hugh, 197, 207, 227
Ayers, Tom, 132, 147
Bad Company, 204, 256, 257
Bangs, Lester, 216
Bardell, Wayne, 49, 54, 206, 229
Barrett, Syd, 135, 194, 388389
Bart, Lionel, 2, 77, 93, 124, 128, 129
Basil, Tony, 211
Bass, Dorothy, 15, 20, 2122, 32, 33
Bauhaus (band), 310
Bayer, Sam, 366
The Beatles, 67, 71, 74, 102, 158, 175, 188, 315,
347, 396
The Beatstalkers, 67, 78, 79, 303, 304
Bebbington, Dave, 101, 102, 107
Beckenham Arts Lab, 9293, 100, 101, 102, 108,
109, 130, 133, 198

Beckenham Free Festival (August 1969), 101102,

117
Belew, Adrian, 286, 287, 289, 290, 291, 347,
348350
Berlin, 189, 249, 250, 257258, 264265,
266270, 271277, 283284, 285, 307308,
362; performance of Heroes by the Wall (6
June, 1987), 336
Berry, Chuck, 17, 18, 101, 139, 152, 153, 155,
209, 210, 214
Berry, Mike, 5455, 57
Bingenheimer, Rodney, 131, 132, 163, 173, 174

Birkett, Jack, 81, 82

Black Francis, 370, 395 Blackboard Jungle (film,
1955), 17
Blackmore, Ritchie, 233, 264
Blair, Tony, 92, 368
Bloom, John, 34, 35
Blowup (Antonioni film), 13
Blur, 293, 357
Bolan, June, 107108
Bolan, Marc (Mark Feld), 55, 64, 77, 112, 114,
160, 161, 163, 193194, 206, 216, 311; Les
Conn and, 35, 36, 50, 5152; friendship/rivalry
with DB, 36, 52, 53, 8586, 88, 107108, 179,
194, 202, 216, 219, 277281; as Mod, 36, 53,
54; shows with Johns Children, 7374; T. Rex,
78, 86, 98, 121, 124, 159, 278; Tony Visconti
and, 78, 85, 86, 107, 124, 125, 202, 280, 281;
guitar on The Prettiest Star, 107108; Ride a
White Swan, 124, 137; glamming up of (1971),
154, 156, 162, 163; Marc (TV series),
277281; death of (16 September, 1977),
280281, 283
Bolder, Trevor, 1, 150, 151, 157, 159, 160, 180,

194195, 205206, 341; Mick Ronson and,

112, 141, 193, 198, 357; in Ronno, 125, 139;
Hunky Dory sessions, 140, 141, 142; Tony
Defries and, 145, 186187, 189, 191; US tours
(19723), 168, 170, 171, 174, 186187;
Hammersmith Odeon (3 July, 1973), 191, 192,
193
Bono, 3, 355, 383
Bonzo Dog Band, 73
Bowes, Nita, 92
Bowie, Angie (ne Barnett), DBs career and, 95,
98, 104, 106, 113114, 116, 124125, 160,
178, 302; relationship with DB pre-marriage,
9596, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105107, 108,
115116; Ken Pitt and, 96, 100, 106, 107, 115;
sexuality of, 106, 129; shops for costumes
(February 1970), 113114; breakdown of
relationship with DB, 115, 169, 176178, 194,
205, 217, 218, 232, 249, 254, 260, 268; open
relationship with DB, 116, 164, 176, 177, 182,
190; Scott Richardson as official lover, 116,
177, 178; wedding (21 March, 1970), 116;
DBs 1971 obscurity period, 126, 127, 128,

129; pregnancy (19701), 130; birth of son

Zowie (30 May, 1971), 138; Warhol troupe
and, 144, 218; trip to USA (September 1971),
150; criticism of DB as cold and selfish, 153,
311; Ziggy Stardust image and, 154, 166, 302;
US tour (1972), 169, 173, 175, 176178; Tony
Defries and, 176, 177, 178, 207; at Oakley
Street house, 200; claims of JaggerDB affair,
202; on DBs cocaine use, 205; Coco Schwab
and, 221, 254, 284, 302; in LA (1975), 236,
237; Clos des Msanges residence
(Switzerland), 249, 253, 254, 268, 283;
disrupts Low sessions, 260; in Berlin, 268,
283284; on Iggy Pop and DB, 269270;
suicide attempt, 283; end of marriage to DB,
283285; divorce settlement, 302; son Zowie
breaks contact with, 302
Bowie, David (David Jones)
CHARACTERISTICS AND
QUALITIES:
ambition, 3, 4, 27, 3839, 49, 74, 85,
185; gay persona, 3, 95, 128129,
155157; charisma and charm, 4, 16, 23,

35, 36, 53, 65, 128, 146, 166, 191, 240,

312, 388; self-doubt, 78, 52, 7980,
200; heterosexual male crushes on, 16,
69, 156; coolness, 22, 26, 44, 55;
kindness, 22, 149, 206, 219, 246, 248,
297, 311, 312, 335, 341; confidence,
2223, 3536, 37, 43, 44, 46, 49, 78,
91, 98, 158, 293, 304, 326327;
womanising (pre-Angie), 23, 36, 43, 55,
6667; cigarette smoking, 33, 84, 195,
205, 285, 331, 333, 364, 383, 384; talent
for self-promotion, 33, 34, 36, 4445,
4849; flirtatiousness, 36, 58, 85, 94,
155; ruthlessness, 36, 3839, 74, 282,
311; suggested selfishness, 39, 248, 311,
341; conservatism, 41, 138, 301, 355,
371; man-child aura, 53, 63, 65, 67, 139,
177, 194, 206207; narcissism, 54, 157,
237, 248; sexual orientation, 55, 77, 94,
95, 129, 155157; as loner, 63;
childrens trust of, 67; creative risktaking, 70, 71, 112; genius for
delegation, 70, 119, 120, 194, 315; fan

persona, 74, 149, 162, 311312, 327;

sharing of songs, 7778, 161162, 164,
178, 255, 334; obsession with UFOs,
8384, 229; effects of celebrity/fame,
90, 166, 206207, 228, 354, 380, 390;
passivity/reliance on others, 91, 98, 99,
104, 108, 119, 125126, 194, 200, 218;
criticism of as cold and manipulative,
9192, 149, 182, 206, 311; womanising,
95, 131, 164, 173, 190, 217, 231, 232,
256, 284285, 322323, 326;
motivational/inspirational abilities, 120,
141, 179180, 383384; sympathy for
outsider musicians, 135, 151152, 153;
obsession with Americana, 150, 151,
170, 208209; fear of flying, 169170,
271; coffee drinking, 195, 205, 331;
obsession with the occult, 231232,
235237, 238, 243; Thin White Duke
persona, 250251; nickname of The
Dame, 311, 328, 358; self-awareness,
328
FILM, TV, RADIO AND STAGE: Top

of the Pops, 13, 162163; The Dick

Cavett Show, 3, 223; Soul Train, 3;
Parkinson show, 10; Ready, Steady,
Win, 29; Ready, Steady, Go!, 38, 62;
Tonight with Cliff Michelmore
(November 1964), 4445; The Pistol
Shot (BBC TV), 84; promotional film
(including Space Oddity, 1969), 90,
283; The Virgin Soldiers, 90; BBC
session (October 1969), 103; BBC In
Concert (February 1970), 104,
110111, 112113; BBC radio session
(March 1970), 118; BBC In Concert
(June 1971), 138139; Basquiat (film,
1996), 148; BBC session (January
1972), 154; Lift Off with Ayshea, 162,
277; Russell Harty Show (January
1973), 179, 180; rumoured film project
(Stranger in a Strange Land), 188; The
1980 Floor Show (NBC), 196; Cracked
Actor (Yentob documentary, 1975),
219220, 223, 229, 230; The Man Who
Fell to Earth, 229230, 232, 235, 238,

239241, 245; The Dinah Shore Show,

271; Marc (Granada TV), 277281;
Bing Crosby Christmas Special (1977),
283; Just a Gigolo, 285286; Ashes to
Ashes video, 294; The Elephant Man
(play), 295299, 327; Baal (TV play,
1981), 305309; The Hunger (film,
1983), 309310, 378; Merry Christmas
Mr. Lawrence (film), 313314, 319;
Lets Dance and China Girl videos,
318319, 320; Jazzin for Blue Jean
(Julien Temple video), 327328;
Absolute Beginners (film), 329332,
334; Labyrinth (film), 332, 334, 378;
BBC Radio Theatre show (June 2000),
379; Zoolander (film), 379; The
Prestige (film), 388; Extras (TV), 389
FINANCES AND MANAGEMENT:
royalties from Space Oddity, 106, 109,
119; MainMan contract (1972), 137,
217218, 228; break with Mercury,
143144; contract with RCA (1971),
147, 150; riches as fully fledged rock

star, 199200; Isolar management

company, 247248, 288, 319, 321, 347,
372, 378; shortage of funds (1976),
253254; EMI contract (1983), 317;
sponsorship deals, 337, 340, 348;
Bowie Bonds, 372374, 391392;
buys rights back from Defries, 373;
Outside (PR company), 375; losses in
recession (from 2007), 392; see also
Defries, Tony; EMI; Lippman, Michael;
MainMan; Pitt, Ken
HEALTH: fainting fit (February 1973),
181; Viscontis concerns (1974), 215;
cocaine use and, 222, 234, 236239;
deterioration seen on Cracked Actor,
229, 230; mental deterioration (summer
of 1975), 233, 234239; improvement in
1976 period, 240241, 245246;
problems on Reality tour (2003),
384385; heart attack and surgery (June
2004), 385, 386, 387, 390
INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES:
science fiction, 11, 135; painting and

drawing, 13, 20, 240, 267, 305306,

361, 364; as petrol-head, 13, 128;
literature, 42, 7677, 121, 135, 199,
280, 296; Tibetan Buddhism, 79, 84,
155, 242; dance, 8083, 340; use of
recreational drugs, 8384, 88, 89, 92;
mime, 86, 88, 90, 148, 211; antiques,
106, 258, 267, 275, 285, 380;
photography, 135; boxing sessions, 383
LIVE PERFORMANCES AND TOURS:
as child/in early teens, 17, 19, 20, 25;
1962June 1964 period, 25, 2627, 29,
30, 3132, 35, 36, 38; July 19641966
period, 42, 43, 45, 47, 52, 57, 60,
6265, 69; 196769 period, 7374,
8283, 86, 8788, 95, 100, 101102,
103, 104; with Lindsay Kemp, 8283;
Turquoise/Feathers multimedia trio,
8788, 95; 1970 period, 108, 111, 113,
114115; 1971 period, 145, 150; at
Friars, Aylesbury, 150, 157158, 164;
1972 period, 157158, 159161, 162,
164, 165, 166167, 168179; crowd

surfing, 160; Rainbow Theatre (summer

1972), 165, 166167, 261; tours of USA
(197273), 167, 168179, 180182,
185187, 249; tour of Japan (1973),
178, 187189; 1973 period, 180182,
185193; Earls Court show (May 1973),
189190; proposed US tour (autumn
1973), 190, 191; Hammersmith Odeon
(3 July, 1973), 191193; Hunger City
stage set, 208, 209, 211, 218219, 221;
tour of USA and Canada (1974),
211213, 218224; Station to Station
tour (1976), 245, 247249, 250251,
252253, 270; The Idiot tour (1977),
270271; Isolar II tour (1978),
286288, 291; Serious Moonlight tour
(1983), 319324; San Bernadino festival
(1983), 322; Berlin (6 June, 1987), 336;
Glass Spider tour (1987), 336338,
339340, 390; Dominion Theatre (July
1988), 340; Tin Machine tours,
345347, 351354; Sound + Vision tour
(1990), 347350; Freddie Mercury

memorial concert, 354355, 358; 1995

tour, 367368; VH1 Storytellers
performance, 377, 393; Glastonbury
Festival (2000), 378379; in recent
years (since 2000), 380, 382383,
384385, 386389; Reality tour (2003
04), 384385
MUSICAL CAREER: guitar playing, 1,
57, 88, 203204, 225; role as tasteful
thief, 23, 142; attitude towards
Spiders, 3, 170, 187, 191; on plagiarism,
3; repositioning the brand, 34, 216;
ukulele playing, 19, 394; saxophone
playing, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 194, 274; the
Kon-Rads, 25, 2630, 274; stage
presence, 30, 33, 36, 42, 160, 211, 222,
287, 321; The Hooker Brothers, 3132;
The King Bees, 3233, 34, 35, 3639,
41; joint sales pitch with father
(January 1964), 33, 34; recording debut
(1964), 37; The Manish Boys, 4047,
48, 57, 305; The Lower Third, 4750,
52, 56, 5758, 6061, 62, 63;

adoption/pronunciation of name Bowie,

51; airbrushing of past, 5354, 63, 135,
284; as fifth Small Face, 5354; Mod
scene and, 5354; unreleased Pye
material, 57; The Buzz, 6263, 6465,
6667, 68, 69; signs to Decca, 6869;
The Riot Squad, 7374, 7778; twelvestring guitar, 87, 97, 98, 127, 198;
Juniors Eyes, 9798, 101, 103, 108,
110; The Hype, 114, 116117, 122, 125,
126, 163; role of subordinates, 119, 120,
384; obscurity in 1971 period, 126130,
135; piano playing, 127, 270, 271;
mistakes Doug Yule for Lou Reed,
130131, 362; promotional tour of USA
(1971), 130133; rapid rehearsal and
recording, 142, 152, 171172, 194, 198,
203, 215, 244, 331; aim to break
America, 144, 145, 146150, 195196,
197198; The Spiders from Mars, 150,
157158, 159163, 164, 166167, 170,
174175, 186187, 188189, 191,
192193; invention of Ziggy Stardust,

151152, 153154; Ziggy cover art

photographs, 154; Melody Maker
interview (1972), 155157; premier of
Ziggy show (January 1972), 157158;
produces Mott the Hoople, 164, 335;
produces Lou Reeds Transformer, 165,
335; produces Iggy Pop, 175, 176, 253,
254258, 261, 271272, 282, 334335,
395; retirement (3 July, 1973),
192193, 219; plans new musical
(Tragic Moments), 195; plans for 1984
show blocked, 195196; The
Astronettes, 196, 198, 202, 373;
funk/soul period, 197199, 212213,
215217, 221; cutand-paste approach
post-Spiders, 199, 200, 202, 203, 225;
the contrary action and, 244245, 325;
failed attempt at The Man Who Fell to
Earth soundtrack, 245, 257258, 262;
heavy-handedness of entourage,
279280, 378379; as patron of late
seventies New Wave, 291; music video
medium, 318319, 327, 328, 366; white

reggae experiment, 325326; Dancing

in the Street duet with Jagger, 332; Live
Aid concert (1985), 332333;
production skills, 335; re-releases and
CD reissues, 347348; relationship with
past catalogue, 352353; as founding
father of Britpop, 357; Brit award for
Lifetime Achievement (1996), 368; end
of century greatest polls, 377;
Meltdown Season (Royal Festival Hall,
2002), 382383; prospects of permanent
retirement, 389, 390, 393394, 396;
desire for glorious exit, 390, 393; back
catalogue availability (from 2012), 392;
lasting influence and legacy, 395396
PERSONAL LIFE: marriages see
Bowie, Angie (ne Barnett); Iman Abdul
Majid; cocaine use see under cocaine;
40 Stansfield Road residence, 7, 9,
1112, 353; birth of (8 January, 1947),
9; childhood, 1117, 1819, 2021;
education, 12, 14, 1516, 19, 2021,
2223, 24, 28, 3031; move to Bromley

(1954), 13; Plaistow Grove residence,

14, 15, 52, 59, 74, 7576, 78, 360;
lasting friendships, 1617, 301,
394395; religion and, 20, 243244,
354355; early interest in girls, 21, 22,
2324; early teenage years, 2125,
2628; eye damaged by punch (1962),
2325; as Face on London scene (1964),
40; schizophrenia of brother, Terry, 76,
109110, 120121, 310311; death of
father (5 August, 1969), 100101, 102;
airbrushing of past, 135; affair with
Cyrinda Foxe, 170171, 176177; 89
Oakley Street residence (Chelsea),
199200; isolation/dislocation (1973
7), 200, 204, 219220, 222, 225, 228,
229, 233, 237238, 241, 281;
psychological crisis (from late 1973),
200, 201, 204207, 210, 217218,
219224, 225, 227, 228229, 230243;
move to New York (1974), 208211;
parenting style, 222, 255256, 300301,
303, 334, 378, 392393; clashes with

Jimmy Page in New York, 231; lives in

LA (1975), 232239, 241245;
exorcism (June 1975), 236; Clos des
Msanges residence (Switzerland), 249,
253, 254, 268, 283, 300301, 303, 309;
trip to Moscow (1976), 251252; lives
in Berlin (19768), 257258, 264265,
266270, 271277, 283284, 285;
dislike of ex-wife, 284, 302, 331; fracas
with Lou Reed (April 1979), 292, 293;
relationship with fans, 297298,
301302, 345, 385; hires bodyguard
after Lennon murder, 301; based in New
York (from 1982), 314; Upper Lausanne
residence, 314, 315, 371; Geeling Ng
and, 318, 322; suicide of brother, Terry,
328329; Gillman biography (1986),
329; Mustique holiday home, 334, 361;
Nichols lawsuit (1987), 339;
engagement to Melissa Hurley, 343344,
350; researches genealogy of the Jones
family, 353; absent from Ronson
memorial concert, 357358; visit to

Haus der Knstler near Vienna,

362363; fiftieth birthday celebration,
370; in New York with Iman, 371372,
379380, 382, 383, 385, 386, 396;
Bermuda holiday home, 375
PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE/CLOTHING: hairstyles, 1, 25, 58, 70, 113, 115, 130, 154,
165166, 211, 250, 255; teeth, 1, 230,
313, 371; Ziggy Stardust costumes, 1,
153154, 157, 158, 164, 165, 178, 191,
380; as a child/teenager, 16, 21, 22;
damaged eye, 24, 26; as a teenager, 25,
26, 27, 30; Mod scene and, 53, 54; waiflike, 53, 55; penis size, 77, 108; Angie
shops for costumes (February 1970),
113114; style (to 1970), 113114; for
The Hype shows, 114; Mr Fish dress,
130, 131, 132, 139, 144; at Friars
(September 1971), 150; during cocaine
use period, 209, 215, 220, 222,
228229, 230; on 1974 US tour, 211;
gouster outfit, 213; Thin White Duke

persona, 250, 255; Scary Monsters

sessions, 293; in Merry Christmas Mr.
Lawrence, 313; alternative-rock goatee,
371; body art, 371; at Cond Nast
Fashion Rocks show, 387
SINGING VOICE: in early career, 33,
38, 42, 46, 48, 50, 58, 62, 79, 80;
imitation of vocal styles, 42, 45, 48, 73,
79; resemblance to Tony Newley,
6869, 80, 274, 370; unique timbre of,
121; on Hunky Dory, 142; on Pin Ups,
195; on Young Americans, 215216,
225; on Low, 263; on Heroes, 276; on
Baal recording, 307308; on Serious
Moonlight tour, 321; in later career,
370, 384, 389
SONGWRITING/LYRICS: borrowing
and assimilation of other styles(after
1970), 12, 138, 141, 142, 158159,
171172, 203, 215216, 244;
techniques/methods, 12, 52, 57, 6162,
70, 126127, 153, 244, 274, 276, 331,
363, 370; in early career, 2930, 3738,

4142, 46, 4849, 52, 5657; borrowing

and assimilation of other styles (to
1970), 4142, 49, 50, 52, 57, 73, 99,
102, 120, 121; homo-eroticism in, 53;
DBs life and, 57, 260, 360, 375376,
381; development/improvement of, 57,
69, 85, 127; reading of music, 70;
harmonic structure of Space Oddity,
88, 89; from the unconscious, 88,
134135; literary references, 121;
writes set of lyrics for My Way, 141;
autumn 1971 period, 151; partying amid
the ruins imagery, 163; in USA (1972
tour), 170171, 172, 173, 178; cut-up
technique, 199, 200, 202, 203, 363;
imagery of Diamond Dogs, 205; Young
Americans, 215; interpretations of
Station to Station, 243244; in The
Idiot period, 255; Heroes, 276;
Absolute Beginners, 331
TECHNOLOGY: use of computers, 363,
369, 370, 381; BowieNet, 374, 375,
389, 393; the internet, 374375, 377;

davidbowie.com/ bowieart.com, 375,

393; Omikron computer game, 375
THOUGHT/POLITICS/CULTURE: on
advertising industry, 31; on Chinas
treatment of Tibet, 84, 86; on Enoch
Powell, 104; post-sexual society youth
manifesto (1971), 142, 154157, 201,
213, 366367; pretty things theme,
154155; praise for Adolf Hitler, 229,
246; obsession with the Third Reich,
238, 243, 246, 251, 258259;
kabbalistic system, 243, 260; pro-fascist
comments, 246, 252253, 258259;
absence of racism, 252, 253, 259, 318; I
Ching, 326; editorial board of Modern
Art magazine, 361; The Diary of Nathan
Adler (short story), 366; non-linear
society concept, 367; as leading
futurologist, 374375
ALBUMS: David Bowie (1967), 6972,
74, 75, 7879, 94; David Bowie (later
Space Oddity, 1969), 9799, 102,
103104, 108109, 393; The Man Who

Sold The World (1970), 114, 119121,

122, 130, 135, 157; Hunky Dory (1971),
140143, 147, 149, 151, 153, 154, 164,
191, 381; The Rise and Fall of Ziggy
Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
(1972), 152153, 160, 164; Aladdin
Sane (1973), 179180, 187, 188, 362;
Pin Ups (1973), 193195, 325;
Diamond Dogs (1974), 203204, 205,
206, 207, 209, 215, 220, 363; David
Live (1974), 212, 215; Young Americans
(1975), 214217, 223225, 230, 241,
362, 363; Station to Station (1976),
241245; Low (1977), 259265,
268269, 277, 282, 297, 382383, 395;
Heroes (1977), 272280, 282283,
290, 291, 297, 395; Stage (1978), 288;
Lodger (1979), 288291; Scary
Monsters (1980), 293295, 298; Baal
(1982), 307308, 309; Lets Dance
(1983), 315317, 318, 325, 355;
Tonight (1984), 325327, 328, 332,
390; Never Let Me Down (1987),

335336, 345, 390; Tin Machine

(1989), 341345, 352; Tin Machine II
(1991), 352; Black Tie White Noise
(1993), 355357, 358, 360; Buddha of
Suburbia soundtrack (1993), 359360,
363; 1.Outside (1995), 361366, 367;
Earthling (1997), 369370; Hours
(1999), 375377; Toy (unreleased), 379,
380381; Heathen (2002), 381383;
Reality (2003), 383384
SONGS: Starman, 12, 158159,
162163, 164, 395; I Never Dreamed
(with Neville Wills), 2930; Liza Jane
(with George Underwood), 3738;
Dont Try to Stop Me, 4142; Take
My Tip, 46, 4849; The Supermen,
46, 120, 303; Youve Got a Habit of
Leaving Me, 50, 52, 57; The London
Boys, 5253, 57, 68, 69; All the Young
Dudes, 53, 161162, 178, 354; Lady
Stardust, 53, 135, 140, 151; Cant
Help Thinking About Me, 57, 58, 59,
60, 62; Its Lovely to Talk to You, 57;

Maid of Bond Street, 57; Do Anything

You Say, 62, 63; I Dig Everything, 66;
Uncle Arthur, 67; Please Mr.
Gravedigger, 68, 71; Rubber Band, 68,
69, 71; Lincoln House, 69; Over the
Wall, 69, 78; Say Goodbye to Mr
Mind, 69; The Laughing Gnome, 70,
7172, 349; Love You till Tuesday,
72, 74; Little Toy Soldier, 73; Let Me
Sleep Beside You, 78, 79, 86, 90, 103,
379; Silver Treetop School for Boys,
78; In the Heat of the Morning, 80, 85;
London Bye Ta Ta, 80, 82; When I
Live My Dream, 80, 100; Columbine,
82; Maids of Mayfair, 82; Threepenny
Pierrot, 82; Silly Boy Blue, 84, 86,
380; Karma Man, 85; The Ching-aLing Song, 88, 90; Space Oddity,
8890, 91, 93, 94, 9697, 99100,
102103, 109, 119, 141, 370; Sell Me a
Coat, 90; Cygnet Committee, 99, 102;
Letter to Hermione, 99, 119, 370;
Wide Eyed Boy From Freecloud, 99;

Memory of a Free Festival, 102, 117;

The Prettiest Star, 106107, 179; The
Width of a Circle, 112113, 120, 274;
John Im Only Dancing, 116; After
All, 120; Black Country Rock, 120;
Saviour Machine, 120; She Shook Me
Cold, 120, 121; The Man Who Sold
the World, 120, 121, 366; All the
Madmen, 120121, 360; Holy Holy,
125, 231; Hang on to Yourself,
133134, 152, 154, 158; Moonage
Daydream, 133134, 135, 140, 151,
358; Oh! You Pretty Things, 134,
135136, 137, 139, 141, 158; Right On
Mother, 135; Kooks, 138, 139, 379;
Hole in the Ground, 139; Star, 140;
Changes, 141, 153, 389; Life on
Mars?, 141, 158, 191, 386388; Song
for Bob Dylan, 141; Quicksand, 142,
231; The Bewlay Brothers, 142;
Suffragette City, 152, 153; Five
Years, 153; Rock n Roll Suicide,
153, 158, 189, 192193, 196; Queen

Bitch, 154, 370; Ziggy Stardust, 154,

158; I Feel Free, 158; The Jean
Genie, 170, 171172, 175, 212, 349;
Drive in Saturday, 172, 178; Cracked
Actor, 173; Aladdin Sane, 179; Panic
in Detroit, 180; Time, 180;
1984/Dodo, 196, 197; Scream Like a
Baby, 198; Somebody Up There Likes
Me, 198; Sweet Thing/Candidate,
199, 204, 205; Rebel Rebel, 203204,
211; Diamond Dogs, 204; Never Let
Me Down, 207, 336; Young
Americans, 215, 216, 349; Can You
Hear Me?, 216; Its Gonna Be Me,
216, 222; Win, 216, 223;
Fascination, 223; Fame, 224225,
230, 241, 295; Word on a Wing, 242,
244; Station to Station, 243244, 250;
Golden Years, 244; Subterraneans,
245, 265, 360, 368; Warszawa, 251,
263, 275, 286; Sister Midnight (with
Carlos Alomar), 254255; China Girl
(with Iggy Pop), 255, 256, 316, 323;

Nightclubbing, 255; Borderline, 256;

Always Crashing in the Same Car,
260, 382; Breaking Glass, 260; Sound
and Vision, 263, 268; What in the
World, 263; Art Decade, 265;
Weeping Wall, 265; Lust for Life,
272, 351; Some Weird Sin, 272;
Success, 272, 275; Blackout, 274;
Sons of the Silent Age, 274; V-2
Schneider, 274; Neukln, 275;
Heroes, 275277, 282283, 333, 370,
377; Sense of Doubt, 288; Boys Keep
Swinging, 289, 290; DJ, 289;
Fantastic Voyage, 289; Yassassin,
289; Play it Safe, 293; Ashes to
Ashes, 294; Teenage Wildlife, 294,
368; Up the Hill Backwards, 294; Cat
People, 303; Under Pressure (with
Queen), 303304, 354, 370; Lets
Dance, 315, 316, 319; Tumble and
Twirl (with Iggy Pop), 325, 326;
Tonight (with Iggy Pop), 326327;
Loving the Alien, 328, 329, 335;

Thats Motivation, 330331; Absolute

Beginners, 330332; Shades, 334;
Glass Spider, 336; Look Back in
Anger, 340, 368; Heavens in Here,
342, 343, 345; I Cant Read (with
Reeves Gabrels), 344; Now, 344;
Outside (Now, with Kevin
Armstrong), 344, 365; Under the God,
346; Goodbye Mr. Ed (with Sales
Brothers), 352; Jump They Say, 356,
357; Miracle Goodnight, 356; Youve
Been Around (with Gabrels), 356;
South Horizon, 360; Strangers When
We Meet, 360, 365; The Mysteries,
360; The Hearts Filthy Lesson, 364,
365, 366; Hallo Spaceboy, 365,
368369; I Have Not Been to Oxford
Town, 365; Thru These Architects
Eyes, 365; Scary Monsters, 368; The
Motel, 368; Dead Man Walking (with
Gabrels), 370; Little Wonder (with
Gabrels/Plati), 370; Safe, 375;
Survive (with Gabrels), 375; The

Pretty Things Are Going to Hell (with

Gabrels), 375; Seven (with Gabrels),
376; The Dreamers (with Gabrels),
376; Thursdays Child (with Gabrels),
376; Shadow Man, 379; Heathen,
381; A Better Future, 382; Slow
Burn, 382; The Angels Have Gone,
382; Bring Me the Disco King, 384;
The Loneliest Guy, 384; (She Can) Do
That (with Brian Transeau), 388; The
Fat Little Man (with Ricky Gervais),
389
Bowie, Zowie see Jones, Duncan (Zowie Bowie,
also Joey, son of DB)
Boyes, Derek Chow, 62, 69, 73
Brecht, Bertholt, Baal (1918), 305309
Brel, Jacques, 80, 87, 104, 112, 150, 364
British Lion company, 239
Britpop, 357, 370
Brixton, 7, 8, 9, 1113, 353
Bromel Club (Royal Court Hotel, Bromley),
3132, 53, 6061, 76, 356
Bromley, 1317, 1922, 28, 30, 38, 46, 6061;

schools and colleges, 14, 1516, 18, 19, 2021,

2223, 24, 25
Brown, James, 42, 209, 210, 214
Browne, Jackson, 312, 317
Buckmaster, Paul, 97, 245
The Buddha of Suburbia (Hanif Kureishi),
359360
Buretti, Freddie, 128, 129, 133, 153, 154, 157,
191, 196, 199, 211, 380
Burns, Terry (half-brother of DB), 1011, 15,
7576, 310, 356, 360; schizophrenia of, 76,
109110, 120121, 310311, 362363; suicide
of (16 January, 1985), 328329
Burroughs, William, 199, 202, 203, 262, 306, 395
Byrne, David, 374
Byrne, Woolf, 41, 42, 43, 44, 4647
Cabaret (film), 165
Cale, John, 173, 249
Cambridge, John, 98, 101, 105, 106, 108,
110111, 113, 116, 118119
Cane Hill asylum, 109, 120121, 130, 328,
362363

Cannes Film Festival, 319

Carey, Mariah, Glitter, 381
Cat People (Paul Schrager film), 303
Chaplin, Charlie, 11, 109, 290
Chaplin, Eugene, 290, 300
Chaplin, Oona, 298
Cherokee Studios (Los Angeles), 234, 242,
257258
Cherry, Ava, 192, 194, 196, 198, 199200,
201202, 204, 206207, 213, 227; on DBs
need for Angie, 115; becomes DBs lover,
181182, 185, 186; on DBs cocaine use, 205;
Coco Schwab and, 207208, 221; in New York
with DB (19745), 208, 209, 228, 231, 232;
Young Americans sessions, 214, 215, 216, 217;
on US tour (1975), 218, 219, 221, 222; in LA
(1975), 235, 236, 237; on DBs non-racism,
252
Chester, Charlie, 42, 43
Childers, Leee, 144, 148149, 157, 169, 173, 209,
218
Chime Rinpoche, Lama, 84, 199, 380
Christmas, Keith, 93, 98, 101, 205, 210, 223

Chrysalis, 124125, 128, 136

Cindy M, 163164
Clapton, Eric, 11, 26, 31, 69, 216, 253
Clark, Ossie, 128, 129, 210
Clarke, Alan, 304305, 306, 308
Clarke, Candy, 240241
Clarke, Hugh Stanley, 317, 330
Clarke, Michael, 162
Clerk, Carol, 311312
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick film), 153, 157
cocaine, 129, 204205, 249, 271, 277, 278; DBs
use of, 204206, 209, 210, 216, 220226, 229,
231240, 242244, 256, 287, 306, 322323,
330331; Iggy Pop and, 205, 249, 272, 275,
309; cocaine psychosis, 234, 236239; DB
ends heavy use of, 246, 249
Cochran, Eddie, 21, 152, 171
Compass Point studio (The Bahamas), 343345
Conn, Les, 3438, 40, 41, 43, 4547, 49, 50,
5152, 79, 107, 335
Cook, Raymond, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 72
Cooper, Mark, 378379
Cordell, Denny, 77, 78, 79

coronation (1953), 11
County, Wayne (later Jayne County), 144, 196
Cox, Terry, 97
Cracked Actor (Alan Yentob documentary, 1975),
219220, 223, 229, 230
Cream, 73, 76, 109, 341, 356
Crosby, Bing, 283
Crowe, Cameron, 95, 234, 236, 237, 246, 254
Crowley, Aleister, 231232, 243
Dali, Salvador, 181, 208
Davies, Dai, 155, 156, 161, 162, 164, 165, 171,
176, 177, 216, 231
Davies, Linda, Something Wild, 372
Davies, Ray, 51, 52, 271
Davis, Dennis, 242, 245, 260, 261, 273, 286, 287,
295
Davis, Evan, 392
Day, Doris, 34, 35
Decca (record company), 30, 3637, 43, 51,
6872, 73, 77, 79, 80; Deram imprint, 68, 72,
73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80
Deep Purple, 233, 264

Defries, Tony, 117118, 121122, 123126,

136138, 140, 143145, 158, 229; Stevie
Wonder and, 126, 137; aim to break America,
144, 145, 146150, 195196, 197198; lack of
generosity to DBs musicians, 145, 209, 210;
RCA and, 145, 146147, 150, 191192, 197,
227; building up of management empire,
147148, 150, 159, 160, 200, 201, 209; Iggy
Pop and, 149150, 159, 188, 196, 219; Ziggy
era and, 154, 156, 158, 159, 161; Lou Reed
and, 164; US tours (19723), 167, 168,
169170, 171, 173, 175, 176177, 178, 182,
186187; Angie Bowie and, 176, 177, 178,
207; tour of Japan (1973), 178, 189; the
Spiders and, 186187, 189, 191, 192; financial
management and, 191192, 197, 207, 209;
decides to retire DB, 192; DBs reliance on,
194, 200, 204, 208, 218; moves MainMan to
USA, 197, 204; estrangement from DB, 209,
217219, 225227, 228, 284; as integral part of
DBs rise, 227; retains DB rights up to 1982,
227, 228, 230, 237, 304, 373; scorns Low, 265,
268; DB buys back rights from, 373; financial

losses (2007), 391

Devo, 283
Dewitt, Barbara, 247, 275, 299
Dexter, Jeff, 36, 53, 78, 83, 84, 85, 86, 114, 229,
278, 279, 280
DHrouville, Chteau, 193195, 198, 204, 253,
254257, 259264
Diana, Princess, 333
Diddley, Bo, 42, 62, 172, 180, 279
Dietrich, Marlene, 275, 285286
Dobells Record Shop (Charing Cross Road), 31
Dolby, Thomas, 332, 333, 374
Donegan, Lonnie, 18, 68, 77
Donovan, 84
Donovan, Terence, 117
Dorritie, Kathy (Cherry Vanilla), 144, 169, 209,
230231, 236
Dorsey, Gail Ann, 367, 369, 378, 386
Double Trouble, 312, 320
Doyle, Tom, 366
Dozier, Lamont, 373374
Drouot, Club (Paris), 52, 60
drugs, 8384, 88, 8990, 103, 165, 173, 174, 205,

220, 223, 271; dope smoking, 8384, 8889,

92, 249; heroin, 89, 132, 149, 226, 249250,
255, 264, 267, 326; marijuana bust in Rochester
(1976), 249; see also cocaine
Drugscope organisation, 237
du Noyer, Paul, 345
Dudgeon, Gus, 70, 73, 77, 9697
Dunbar, Aynsley, 195, 198, 203
Duncan, Lesley, 83, 87, 229, 364
Dylan, Bob, 31, 33, 42, 65, 99, 137, 143, 151, 232
Eager, John, 62, 69
Eckstein, Billy, 64, 107

economy, British, 910, 11, 15, 163, 190

Edmonds, Ben, 246
Eggar, Robin, 268, 269
Electric Circus (New York), 130131
Electric Lady studio (New York), 224, 226
The Elephant Man (play), 295299, 327
Elmlark, Wally, 236
Emerson, Keith, 154
EMI, 51, 79, 304, 317, 319, 335, 341, 346, 347,
352, 392; Virgin America, 365, 37980, 381
Eno, Brian, 283, 286, 291, 355, 358, 362363,
381, 383, 396; Low sessions, 259, 260,
261265, 268; Oblique Strategy techniques,
262, 288289, 3634; Heroes sessions, 273,
274, 276, 277; producer for U2, 338, 362;
1.Outside and, 362363, 364, 365
Epstein, Brian, 30, 34, 64, 66
Essex Music, 77, 78, 79, 88, 96, 97, 124, 125
The Exploited, 311312
Fairport Convention, 93
Faith, Adam, 18, 35
Faithfull, Marianne, 45, 196

Fame (Tony Ingrassia play), 225, 226

Fame, Georgie, 46, 335
Farren, Mick, 81, 91, 121, 174, 221222; on DB
and drugs, 221, 222223
Farthingale, Hermione, 8485, 86, 8788, 8990,
92, 94
FD&H (record shop, Charing Cross Road), 49
Fearnley, Derek Dek, 6162, 63, 65, 67, 69, 70,
72, 73, 76, 314
Ferry, Bryan, 54, 163, 181, 193, 195, 208, 211,
225, 262
Finnigan, Mary, 92, 101102, 104
Fisher, Matthew, 166, 167, 179
Fisher, Norman, 208209, 230
Flag, Bob, 7374
Flowers, Herbie, 97, 125, 138139, 165, 203,
212, 278
Flux, Johnny, 41, 44, 45, 47
The Fool (design collective), 94
Fordham, Ken, 180, 186, 191
Fowley, Kim, 131, 133
Fox, Rick, 348, 349
Foxe, Cyrinda, 169, 170171, 173, 176177

Frampton, Owen, 20, 24, 31

Frampton, Peter, 20, 24, 29, 337
Franklin, Aretha, 181, 212, 232
Friars, Aylesbury, 150, 157158, 164, 270
Friedmann, Esther, 272, 284, 292, 298, 309, 311,
314
Fripp, Robert, 274, 276, 290, 294
Fussey, Suzi (Suzi Ronson), 166, 169, 178, 186,
191, 192, 207, 357, 358
Gabrels, Reeves, 340341, 355356, 367, 368,
369, 370, 372, 375377; Tin Machine and, 341,
342, 343, 346, 347, 351352, 354; 1.Outside
and, 362, 363364, 365
Gadzooks (TV programme), 46, 48
Gainsbourg, Serge, Melody Nelson, 203
Gardiner, Ricky, 259, 261, 262, 269, 272
Garland, Judy, 1, 2, 53, 65, 66, 159, 163, 388
Garrett, Michael, 82, 83, 89
Garson, Mike, 191, 193, 206, 216, 221, 360, 367,
368, 369, 389, 396; US tours (19723), 170,
174, 186; Aladdin Sane and, 17980; 1.Outside
and, 362, 363364, 367; Reality (album) and

Reality tour (20034), 383, 384385; Cond

Nast Fashion Rocks show (2005), 386388
Gem (management company), 117, 124, 125, 144,
147, 149, 150, 155, 156, 159, 161
Genet, Jean, 81, 165, 171, 395
George, Stuey, 169, 175, 181
Gersh, Gary, 317
Gervais, Ricky, Extras, 389
Gibbons, Pat, 247, 251, 287, 288, 320
Gillespie, Dana, 55, 126, 137, 138, 145, 159, 293
Gillman, Peter and Leni, 329
Gilmour, David, 388389
Glam Rock, 12, 154, 156, 161163, 232
Glass, Philip, 368, 369, 380, 396
Glastonbury Festival, 378
Godin, Nicolas, 395
Gring, Hermann, 308
Grace, Bob, 124125, 126, 127128, 129, 133,
135, 138, 150, 162, 210, 245246; Oh! You
Pretty Things and, 134, 136; Hunky Dory and,
140, 141, 245
Green, Irving, 94, 99
Griffin, Jeff, 104, 112, 139

Griffin Music, 391

Grohl, Dave, 370
Grossman, Albert, 143
Grundy, Bill, 270
Grundy, Stuart, 250
Guess, Jason, 196, 198
Gugging Hospital (near Vienna), 362363
Guinness, Sabrina, 365
Haag, Romy, 250, 253, 258, 268, 269
Haddon Hall residence, 101, 102, 105106, 108,
109, 113, 124125, 126, 129130, 144145,
218; piano at, 126127, 153; in Ziggy era,
163164, 178, 179
Hadfield, David, 27, 28, 2930, 51
Hall, Tony, 68, 77
Hammer, Chuck, 292, 293, 294, 383
Hansa Studios (Berlin), 258, 264265, 271273,
276, 307
Hardin, Tim, 62, 99, 104
Harrison, George, 140
Harry, Bill, 135, 136
Harry, Debbie, 314

Harwood, Keith, 203

Hatch, Tony, 5657, 58, 59, 66, 68, 69
Hayes, Simon, 94, 95, 96, 99100
Hayman, Martin, 192
Heatwave, 325
Heckel, Eric, 257, 258, 277
Heinlein, Robert A., 121, 188
Hello! magazine, 355, 379
Hemmings, David, 285286
Hendrix, Jimi, 93, 121, 287, 341
Hermans Hermits, 134
Hibbert, Tom, 311
Hill, Tony, 87, 286
Hilversum (Netherlands), 207
Himmler, Heinrich, 231, 232
hippie underground, 83, 878, 9293
Hirst, Clare, 332333
Hit Factory (New York), 223224, 365
Hitler, Adolf, 229, 231, 246, 258259
Hockney, David, 81, 128, 156, 249, 298
Hofsiss, Jack, 295
homosexuality, 3, 18, 28, 156157, 258, 286, 329;
DBs gay persona, 3, 55, 61, 95, 128129,

155157; homo-eroticism in song lyrics, 53;

Mod scene and, 5455; gay musicbusiness
clique, 55; gay managerial archetypes in 1960s
London, 64, 66; Joe Ortons Entertaining Mr
Sloane, 65; London scene (early 1970s), 131
Hooker, John Lee, 31, 38, 341, 371
Hopkin, Mary, 189, 263, 276, 281
Hopper, Dennis, 234, 235
Horkins, Tony, 337
Horton, Ralph, 5051, 52, 5556, 57, 58, 59,
6062, 64, 65, 66, 69, 72, 77
House, Simon, 286, 287288, 289, 290
House of the Rising Sun (song), 31, 33, 43, 152
Howard, Tony, 278, 279, 280
Hudson, Ola, 234
Hughes, Glenn, 233, 234, 237238, 239, 242, 243,
244, 325
Hunt, Marsha, 202
Hunter, Ian, 161, 172, 178, 188
Hurt, John, 297
Hutchinson, John, 15, 50, 52, 62, 63, 6667,
8789, 92, 111; 1973 tours and, 180, 181, 186,
189190, 191, 192193

Idol, Billy, 314

Iman Abdul Majid, 301, 350351, 352, 353, 355,
371372, 375, 382, 383, 385, 393; compiles
fiftieth birthday tribute book, 370371;
pregnancy (2000), 377378; birth of daughter
Alexandria Zahra (15 August 2000), 379
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino film),
303
Ingrassia, Tony, 144, 195, 225, 226
Inhlsen, Harald, 269
International Times, 87, 91, 92, 121
Interview magazine, 148, 358359, 362363
Isherwood, Christopher, 9, 249, 250, 258, 298
Isle of Wight, 19, 52, 394
Ives, Charles, 362
Jackson, Michael, 319, 322, 323, 324, 325, 337,
338
Jagger, Bianca, 201, 202, 285
Jagger, Mick, 26, 33, 61, 129, 131, 193, 199,
201203, 280, 295, 349, 373; role in
Performance, 229; Roeg plans to use in The
Man Who Fell to Earth, 229230; Dancing in

the Street duet with DB, 332

James, Dick, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38
Japan, tour of (1973), 178, 187189
jazz music, 21, 312
Jenkins, Florence, 208209
Jennings, Claudia, 235
Jim Henson puppet workshop, 378
John, Elton, 163, 173, 220221
Jones, Alexandria Zahra (daughter of DB), 379,
380, 382, 383, 395, 396
Jones, Anton, 176, 177
Jones, Brian, 202
Jones, Duncan (Zowie Bowie, also Joey, son of
DB), 138, 200, 285, 310, 355; Angies
parenting of, 138, 283, 302; DBs parenting
style, 222, 255256, 300301, 303, 334, 378,
392393; Marion Skene as nanny of, 222, 254,
255, 263, 283, 300, 302; at Gordonstoun
school, 301, 343, 378; reverts to first name
Duncan, 310, 378; film career, 378, 392393;
Moon (film directorial debut, 2009), 392393
Jones, Gloria, 216, 280281
Jones, Haywood Stenton (father of DB), 814, 17,

24, 3031, 3334, 35, 59, 72, 76; Dr

Barnardos and, 8, 910, 12, 1314, 22, 179;
Ken Pitt and, 75, 86, 101; death of (5 August,
1969), 100101, 102, 109
Jones, Kenney, 5354
Jones, Margaret Peggy (ne Burns, mother of
DB), 811, 1415, 30, 35, 76, 106, 109, 116,
302; DBs relationship with, 10, 15, 33, 5758,
59, 102, 200, 302, 310, 355; madness in
Burns family, 10, 14, 110, 329; grandson Zowie
and, 200, 310; death of (April 2001), 380
Jones, Steve, 271, 334

Kabuki, 81, 188, 395

Kael, Pauline, 241
Kamen, Michael, 210211, 221
Katrina, Hurricane, 386388
Katz, Dennis, 147, 186
Kelly, Graham, 103, 110, 139
Kemp, Lindsay, 8083, 84, 114, 145, 155, 165,
166, 199, 296
Kensell, Robert, 129, 231
Kent, Andrew, 247, 249, 251, 252, 271
Keys, Alicia, 387, 389
King, Mickey, 128, 129
The Kinks, 45, 48, 50, 51, 52, 67, 194
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 258, 277
Kizilcay, Erdal, 334, 335, 337, 340, 348, 349,
350, 359360, 363364, 372
Klein, Allen, 123, 226, 228
Korniloff, Natasha, 82, 83, 286, 294
Kraftwerk, 248, 249, 261, 274
Kramer, Eddie, 224, 225
Kubrick, Stanley, 88, 89, 153, 157
La Gioconda (Denmark Street coffee bar), 36, 44,

47, 50, 51, 53, 73, 152

La La La Human Steps, 340, 344, 347
Labour Party, 910
Lady Gaga, 3, 395
Laine, Denny, 51, 56, 78
Lambert, Kit, 66, 129
Landis, Jeanette, 296, 297
Larkin, Philip, This Be The Verse, 10
League for the Protection of Animal Filament,
4445
Lear, Amanda, 208
Lecavalier, Louise, 340
Led Zeppelin, 91, 104, 136, 231, 341
Lee, Calvin Mark, 9395, 97, 99, 102, 103, 116,
128
Legendary Stardust Cowboy, 133, 135, 152, 362
Lennon, Freddie, 58
Lennon, John, 11, 61, 94, 104, 135, 158, 222225,
226, 295, 336, 396; DB and, 220221,
223225, 226, 228, 230, 295, 298, 299, 324,
396; murder of (8 December, 1980), 299, 301
Lennon, Sean, 343
Lennox, Annie, 354, 355

Lippman, Michael, 226, 232, 235, 236, 238, 240,

244, 245; legal battle with DB, 254, 260, 262,
263, 320
Little Richard (Richard Penniman), 1718, 315,
325, 353, 387
Litvinoff, Si, 229, 232, 245
Live Aid concert (1985), 332333
Lloyd, George, 16
London, Radio, 52, 55, 59, 62, 78
London Philharmonic Orchestra, 70
Looking Glass Studios (New York), 369, 383
Lott, Tim, 268
Lulu, 190, 209
Luxembourg Studios, 127128, 133, 134, 135, 140
Lynn, Vera, 2, 35
Lynott, Phil, 215
Maas, Antonia, 276
MacCormack, Geoff, 139, 180, 191, 196, 223,
232, 240, 245, 355, 371; childhood/youth, 13,
1617, 21; tour of US/Japan (1973), 180, 181,
186, 187188, 189; in New York with DB
(1974), 208, 211, 213

MacDonald, Ian, 158, 243, 274

MacInness, Colin, 330
Madonna, 3, 226, 280, 321, 338, 395
The Main Ingredient, 208, 209, 210, 212, 221
MainMan, 137, 147148, 150, 160162, 164, 171,
175, 176, 178, 188, 212, 226267; in USA,
169, 197, 204; financial problems, 191192,
197, 204, 207, 226; disorganisation of,
196197, 204; DBs estrangement from,
217218, 225226, 227, 228; retains DB rights
up to 1982, 227, 228, 230, 237, 304, 373; see
also Defries, Tony
Mair, Alan, 6768, 78, 7980, 93, 303
Major, Tom (father of John), 89
Mallett, David, 318
Mancini, Henry, Peter Gunn, 315, 316
Manson family, 234, 235
Marin Heights (Canada), 325, 326
Marks, Louis, 305306, 308
Marquee Club, 52, 55, 57, 60, 62, 6465, 73, 111,
196
Marriott, Steve, 47, 53, 54, 61, 62
Marsh, Dave, 164165

Marshall, Benny, 125, 139

Martin, George, 96
Mascia, Tony, 238, 239, 247
Masereel, Frans, 305
Matheu, Robert, 212, 221
Max, Glenn, 382383
Maxs Kansas City (New York), 147, 148149,
150, 180181, 215
May, Brian, 303, 304, 354
Mayersberg, Paul, 313
Mayes, Sean, 286, 287, 325
Mayhew, Robin, 145, 158, 160, 169, 173, 174,
175
McBride, Robin, 99, 130, 143
McCartney, Paul, 134, 141, 142, 158, 224, 225
McCulloch, Ian, 395
Medhursts department store (Bromley), 21, 30,
74, 315, 353
Meek, Joe, 2829, 73, 93, 274
Melody Maker, 75, 155157, 159, 160, 161, 191,
249, 292, 311
Mendelssohn, John, 131, 132133, 168
Mendl, Hugh, 6869, 70, 77, 80

Mercury, Freddie, 78, 157, 303304, 354

Mercury Records, 94, 95, 97, 99100, 103104,
130, 131, 132, 137, 138, 140, 143144
Metropolis (Fritz Lang film), 208, 342
Meyer, Eduard, 265, 275, 283, 307, 336
Mingus, Charles, 21, 181
Moby, 380
Mod scene, 31, 36, 40, 5355
MOJO magazine, 311
Momus, 395396
Monck, Chip, 337
Monroe, Marilyn, 226, 236
Montreux Jazz Festival, 312
Moody Blues, 51, 77
Moondog, 130, 135
Morning of the Magicians (Louis Pauwels and
Jacques Bergier), 232
Moroder, Giorgio, 303
Morrissey, 356, 368
Most, Mickie, 34, 4344, 47, 79, 117, 134, 394
Mott the Hoople, 161162, 164, 172, 178, 188,
196
Mountain Studio (Montreux), 288290, 303, 316,

335, 341, 342343, 359, 363364

MTV, 309, 319, 366
Mugler, Thierry, 350, 355
Muldowney, Dominic, 307, 308, 383
Murray, Charles Shaar, 16, 69, 155, 156, 310, 321,
324, 326327
Murray, George, 242, 245, 259, 261, 262, 273,
286, 295
Musicland studio (Munich), 257
Myers, Laurence, 117, 118, 124, 137, 140, 145,
147, 192, 373
Napier-Bell, Simon, 55
Naughton, John, 374
Needs, Kris, 150, 158, 270
Neu!, 259, 261, 273
Neue Sachlichkeit art movement, 306, 342
Nevin D. Hirst (ad agency), 31, 42
New Musical Express (NME), 155, 221, 238239,
259, 349, 357
New Wave, late seventies, 277, 291, 293, 295,
393
Newley, Tony, 65, 6869, 77, 80, 274, 370

Newman, Tony, 206, 212, 278

The Nice, 75, 154
Nicholas, Paul, 78
Nico, 255
9/11 terrorist attacks, 382
Nine Inch Nails, 359, 366, 367368
Nirvana, 366
Noone, Peter, 134, 135136
Oberman, Ron, 130, 131
Observers Book of Music (Frida Dinn), 70, 126,
265
Odam, Norman Carl (Legendary Stardust
Cowboy), 133, 135, 152, 362
Oldham, Andrew Loog, 66
Olivier, Laurence, 308
Olympic Studios (Barnes), 129, 162, 198, 203,
204
On Being Negro in America (J. Saunders
Redding), 42
ONeill, Terry, 220
Ono, Yoko, 225, 295, 298, 355
Orwell, George, 1984, 195, 203

Orwell, Sonia, 195

Osbourne, Sharon, 11
Oshima, Nagisa, 313, 314, 319
Outsider (Colin Wilson book), 232
Packard, Vance, 330
Padgham, Hugh, 325326
Page, Jimmy, 45, 46, 231, 232, 370
Palin, Will, 167, 170
Palmer, Phil, 257, 259
Palmer, Robert, 317, 343
Palmer, Tony, 104
Pang, May, 220, 223224, 225, 298, 299
Parker, Alan, 203204
Parker, Colonel Tom, 123, 137, 169
Parker, Tom, 67, 150
Parmar, Daniella, 129, 199, 255
Peacock, Annette, 170, 196
Peel, John, 101, 112, 139, 195, 212
Pegg, Nicholas, 89
Pepsi, 337, 340
Pet Shop Boys, 369
Philips (record company), 94, 97, 99, 102, 103,

117, 122, 124, 130

Phoenix Festival, 370
Pine, Courtney, 388
Pink Floyd, 83, 194, 389
Pitney, Gene, 45
Pitt, Ken, 45, 51, 56, 6469, 7580, 84, 90, 103,
229, 319, 388; DBs family and, 10, 75, 86,
101, 310, 329, 380; Warhol connections, 72,
122; DB lives at Manchester Street flat, 75,
7677, 78; decline of influence on DB, 86, 93,
99, 100, 101, 104, 106, 107, 115, 116; Angie
Bowie and, 96, 100, 106, 107, 115; as too
gentlemanly, 99, 122; The Hype and, 114; DB
removes as manager, 117118, 121122
Pity the Fool (song), 4546, 50, 206, 212
Pixies (band), 341, 370, 395
Plank, Konrad Connie, 249
Plati, Mark, 369, 376, 378, 379, 382, 383
Platz, David, 77, 78, 79, 96, 97, 100, 124
The Police, 325326
Pond, Steve, 336
Pop, Iggy (Jim Osterberg) on DB, 3, 175, 185,
219, 235, 248; as inspiration for Ziggy Stardust,

3, 151152, 153; DB hears for first time,

132133; as outsider, 135, 244, 362; DBs
sponsorship of career, 149150, 164165,
175176, 270272, 282, 292293; Defries and,
149150, 159, 188, 196, 219; crowd surfing
and, 160; The Jean Genie inspired by, 171,
175; in LA (1972), 173; drug use, 205,
233234, 249250, 267, 271, 272, 275, 292,
309; splits from Stooges, 219; patient at
Neuropsychiatric Institute, 233234; recordings
with DB (May 1975), 234235; friendship with
DB (from 1976), 246, 247249, 254, 255,
266267, 269270, 298, 301, 391; meeting
with DB in San Diego (1976), 246; with
Station to Station tour (1976), 247248; trip to
Moscow (1976), 251252; The Idiot, 253,
254258, 261, 269, 271, 282, 344, 395; brief
affair with Kuelan Nguyen, 256, 318; lives with
DB in Berlin, 257, 264265, 266270; Nazi
symbolism and, 258; sings on Low, 263;
Stooges anecdotes, 263264; The Idiot tour
(1977), 270271; Lust for Life, 271272, 282;
sex life in Berlin, 284; sacking of Sales

brothers, 285, 341; post-Lust for Life career,

292293; downward spiral (19823 period),
309, 314, 323; helped by DB (1980s), 309,
314, 326, 334335; recovery (from 1983), 323,
324325, 326, 334335; Tumble and Twirl
lyrics, 325, 326; Blah Blah Blah (1986),
334335; Bang Bang, 336; on Tin Machine,
346; American Caesar (1994), 353; as
complementary character to DB, 353354;
fiftieth birthday of, 371; DB loses touch with
(late 1990s), 390391; reunites with Stooges,
390391
Port of Amsterdam (Brel song), 87, 112, 150
post-modernism, 23, 142
Power Station studio (New York), 293, 304, 316,
318
Presley, Elvis, 3, 4, 18, 127, 132, 137, 147, 186,
190, 222223
The Prestige (Christopher Nolan film), 388
The Pretty Things, 19, 26, 32, 33, 46, 52, 194
Prince, 3, 280, 321, 338, 359
Pritchett, Mark (Mark Carr-Pritchard), 95, 101,
108, 113114, 139, 142, 154, 196, 301; on DB

and Terry, 110, 310, 329; Runk (Arnold Corns),

127, 128, 133, 208, 211; last sessions with DB,
197198, 199
Procol Harum, 78, 167
The Prodigy, 369
Pullman, David, 372, 373
punk movement, 132, 158, 175, 176, 270271,
277, 278, 298, 312
Pye label, 5657, 58, 62, 66, 68, 69
The Quatermass Experiment (BBC series), 11
Queen, 3034, 333, 354
Rainbow Theatre (Finsbury Park), 165, 166167,
179, 211, 261
The Rats, 111112, 116, 118, 125, 145
Ray, Rex, 376
RCA, 132, 140, 145, 146, 158, 197, 210, 227,
228, 259, 277, 288, 307; US tours (19723)
and, 167, 169, 170, 171, 176, 178, 181, 187,
191192; lack of enthusiasm for Low, 265,
268269, 277, 309; re-release of DB albums,
347348

Ready, Steady, Go! (TV programme), 29, 38, 62

Record Plant (New York), 290, 335
Reed, Lou, 72, 130, 142, 160, 164165, 173, 175,
193, 196, 231; DBs fascination with, 148, 150,
151, 155; DBs sponsorship of career, 164,
165, 175, 190, 270; Transformer, 165, 291,
335; Walk on the Wild Side, 172, 190, 212;
spring 1979 European tour, 291292; fracas
with DB (April 1979), 292, 293; friendship
with DB (1990s onwards), 369, 370, 380
Reizner, Lou, 9495
Relf, Keith, 26, 47, 48
Renwick, Tim, 98, 103, 108, 110, 113, 138139
Reznor, Trent, 367, 368
RG Jones Studio (Wimbledon), 50, 68
Richard, Cliff, 27
Richards, Keith, 16, 17, 19, 26, 32, 134, 203, 220,
301, 371
Richardson, Scott, 116, 163, 169, 177, 187, 192,
193, 194, 195, 198, 202, 218
Rivens, Graham, 47, 50, 58, 60, 61
Roberts, Chris, 367
Robinson, Lisa, 146, 147, 148, 149, 164, 173

Rock, Mick, 161, 169, 303, 358

rock n roll, 3, 1719, 24, 26, 32, 61, 91, 114,
152153, 161, 293, 353
rock opera, 151
the Rockettes, 181
Rodgers, Nile, 197, 314317, 318, 355356
Rodgers, Paul, 362
Rodriguez, Paul, 41, 42, 47
Roeg, Nicolas, 229230, 232, 235, 238, 239241,
245, 265, 285
Rolling Stone, 131, 144, 171, 195, 199, 237, 336
Rolling Stones, 30, 32, 46, 131, 134, 204, 205,
207, 232, 347; Exile on Main Street, 202; as
influence on Diamond Dogs, 203, 204; Tattoo
You tour (1981), 319; Steel Wheels tour (1989),
324
Ronno (Mick Ronson group), 120, 125, 139
Ronson, Mick, 111114, 118122, 125, 139; Top
of the Pops (July 1972), 1, 2, 3, 162; Trevor
Bolder and, 112, 141, 193, 198, 357; influence
on DBs music, 113, 114, 117, 120, 311, 358;
DB delegates to, 119, 120, 194, 199, 315;
musical arrangements, 119, 141142, 165, 358;

Ziggy shows and, 157, 158, 160, 164, 191, 192,

193; guitar fellatio photograph, 161; US tours
(19723), 170, 171, 172, 173174, 175,
186187; pay dissatisfaction (1973), 186187;
DBs attitude towards, 187, 194, 204, 357358;
solo album deal (1973), 187, 193, 194, 198,
204, 323; Pin Ups and, 194195; last sessions
with DB, 197198; marriage to Suzi Fussey,
207; influence on Brian May, 303; reunion with
DB (1983), 323324; plays on Black Tie White
Noise, 356357; illness and death, 354355,
357358;
Rook, Jean, 252
Ross, Diana, 219, 314
the Roundhouse, 36, 78, 87, 95, 113, 114, 144
Roxy Music, 162, 163, 164, 181, 193, 211,
261262
Rugrats movie, 375
Rundgren, Todd, 269, 286
Runk (renamed Arnold Corns), 127, 128, 133, 208,
211
Ruta, Ken, 295297, 298

Sakomoto, Ryuichi, 313, 319

Sales, Hunt, 269, 270, 271, 272, 285, 341343,
345346, 351354
Sales, Soupy, 269, 342343
Sales, Tony, 269, 271, 272, 285, 311, 341342,
343, 345346, 354
Samye Ling Tibetan Monastery (Scotland), 84
Satyricon (Fellini film), 173
Savage (record company), 356
Savage, John, 288
Schermerhorn, Eric, 78, 248, 340, 351, 352,
353354
Schiele, Egon, 20, 77, 257
Schwab, Corinne Coco, 218, 227, 240, 249, 251,
255, 275, 292, 299, 334, 344, 376; management
role, 204, 207, 237238, 247, 254, 279, 287,
288, 378; Ava Cherry and, 207208, 221;
importance to DB of, 207208, 284, 298, 301,
324, 390; Angie Bowie and, 221, 254, 284,
302; in Berlin, 266267, 283, 284
Schwartz, Peter, 367
Scientology, Church of, 174175, 180, 186, 193,
221, 363

Scott, Ken, 119, 140, 141, 142, 150, 152, 158,

165, 171, 180, 194, 197198, 358
Scott, Tony, 309310, 378
scout movement, 16, 19
Se7en (David Fincher film), 365
Secunda, Chelita, 114, 163
Sekers, Miki, 82
Seligman, Matthew, 330, 331, 332, 333
Sessler, Freddy, 220, 232233, 237, 246
Sex Pistols, 270271, 327, 334
sexual revolution (1960s), 41, 5455
Shannon, Tommy, 312, 317, 320
Shaw, Greg, 195
Sigma Sound studio (Philadelphia), 214217, 218,
242
Simms, Frank, 320, 321322, 323, 324
Simms, George, 322, 323, 367
Simon, Paul, 152153
Simon and Garfunkel, 99, 104
Simone, Nina, 238
Simpson, Kate, 104
The Simpsons (TV show), 342343
Sinatra, Frank, 65, 67, 127, 211, 269, 307

Siouxsie Sioux, 253

Sischy, Ingrid, 362363
Six-Five Special (TV programme), 18
Skene, Marion, 222, 254, 255, 263, 283, 300, 302
skiffle, 18
Slash (Saul Hudson), 234
Slaughter on Fifth Avenue (Richard Rodgers
song), 187
Slaven, Neil, 7071, 242243
Slick, Earl, 210, 212, 222, 242, 245, 320321,
324, 378
Small Faces, 5354, 61, 62, 67
Smashing Pumpkins, 366, 370
Smith, Mike, 4344
Smith, Robert, 370
The Smiths, 343, 357
Solly, Bob, 34, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 4647
Sombrero Club, 128129, 144, 145, 155, 157
Sony, 382
Soul Train (TV programme), 3, 213, 215
Sounds, 133, 156, 160161, 190, 192, 288, 292
Sounds Incorporated, 41
Spandau Ballet, 291

Sparta Music, 54, 57

The Spear of Destiny (Trevor Ravenscourt), 231
Speer, Albert, 229
Spinetti, Henry, 127, 128, 134
Springsteen, Bruce, 181, 215216, 332
Star Club (Hamburg), 44, 46
Status Quo, 344
Steele, Tommy, 18, 68, 73
Steinberg, Irwin, 99, 143
Stevens, Cat, 80
Stevenson, Ray, 8384, 8586, 89, 92, 95, 100,
107, 110, 114
The Stooges, 132, 133, 152, 159, 164, 175178,
188, 212, 219, 247, 248, 263264, 390391
Story of Pop magazine (BBC), 190
Strange, Steve, 156, 294295
Suede, 357
Sugerman, Danny, 233, 234
Sundance Film Festival, 393
Sweet, 161, 172
T. Rex, 2, 78, 86, 98, 121, 124, 159, 278
Talking Heads, 271, 291

Talmy, Shel, 34, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51

Tangerine Dream, 256, 261, 285
Taylor, Denis, 4748, 50, 52, 55, 56, 5758,
6061
Taylor, Elizabeth, 220, 354
Taylor, Roger, 157, 303304
Taylor, Vince, 152, 153, 244
Temple, Julien, 327328, 329332, 334, 390
Terry, Sara, 339340
Theatre of the Ridiculous, 144, 145
Thibault, Laurent, 253, 255, 257, 264
Thomas, Jeremy, 313, 314
Thompson, Tony, 317, 321
Three Tuns (Beckenham High Street), 9293, 100,
114
Thunders, Johnny, 250, 270
Tibet, 79, 81, 84, 86, 155, 380
Top of the Pops (BBC programme), 13, 99,
162163, 319
Townshend, Pete, 51, 58, 271
Trident Studios, 98, 107, 119, 140143, 152153,
159, 179, 197198, 303
Turner, Ike, 216, 221

Turner, Simon, 196197

Turner, Tina, 216, 326, 337
TV on the Radio, 388
U2 (band), 322, 338, 362
Underhill Studio (Greenwich), 2, 151, 286
Underwood, Birgit, 169, 170, 172
Underwood, George, 1622, 49, 139, 169, 170,
172, 301, 394; punches DB in eye (1962),
2325; George and the Dragons, 24, 25; in The
Kon-Rads, 25, 2627, 30; The Hooker
Brothers, 3132; The King Bees, 32, 33, 34,
35, 37, 38; as Calvin James, 47; career as artist
and illustrator, 86, 200, 394
Underworld (band), 360, 369, 370
United States of America: commercial damage of
DBs gay persona, 3, 156; release of edited
Space Oddity, 99100; promotional tour of
(1971), 130133; DB and Tony Defries aim to
break, 144, 145, 146150, 195196, 197198;
trip to New York (September 1971), 145,
146150; tours of (19723), 167, 168179,
180182, 185187, 249; empty seats and

cancellations (1972), 171, 172, 176, 249; poor

DB album sales (up to 1973), 188; DB in New
York (19745), 208211, 223225, 228, 231,
232; tour of (1974), 211213, 218224;
success of David Live album, 212; DB in LA
(1975), 232239, 241245; DB in New York,
379380, 382, 383, 385, 386, 396
Valentine, Penny, 75, 97, 125
Vandross, Luther, 214, 219, 222, 223
Vanilla, Cherry (Kathy Dorritie), 144, 169, 209,
230231, 236
Vaughan, Stevie Ray, 312, 316317, 319320
Velvet Underground, 72, 73, 74, 81, 130131, 132,
154, 173
Vernon, Mike, 69, 7071, 72
Victory label, 352
Visconti, Tony, 7880, 88, 89, 9699, 111,
118120, 125, 206; Marc Bolan and, 78, 85,
86, 107, 124, 125, 202, 280, 281; produces DB
(to 1970), 79, 80, 9699, 102, 104, 119120;
Ken Pitt and, 86, 107, 319; dislike of Space
Oddity, 93, 96; personal life, 106, 124, 189,

225, 263, 276, 381; as bass guitarist, 112113,

114, 119, 125, 380; on Mick Ronson, 113, 119,
120, 311; Ronno (band) and, 120, 125;
defection of, 122, 124, 125; mixes Diamond
Dogs and David Live, 214; produces DB
(197177), 215, 216, 223224, 257258,
259265, 272277, 282; Berlin and, 257258,
264265, 266267, 272, 273, 275, 276,
307308, 362; Eventide Harmoniser and, 259,
261; produces DB (from 197881), 289, 290,
294, 295, 307308; rift with DB over Gillman
biography, 329; produces DB (from 1998), 375,
379, 381382, 383384; on stage with DB
(2001), 380
A Voyage Round My Father (John Mortimer play),
308
Waiting for the Man (Lou Reed song), 73, 130,
150, 175, 370
Wakeman, Rick, 97, 142, 150
Walker, Scott, 87, 225, 364365, 376
Ward, Brian, 135, 154
Warhol, Andy, 3, 72, 120, 122, 142, 148, 151,

165, 298, 306, 358; Pork, 144145, 176, 195,

199, 218, 226
Waters, Muddy, 17, 32, 170, 172, 320, 341
Watson, John, 41, 42, 44, 45
Watts, Michael, 155157
Wayne, Mick, 97, 98, 103, 108, 110, 379
Welch, Chris, 75, 279, 280
The Who, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 94
Willett, John, 305307, 308309
Williamson, James, 159, 175176, 234235, 391
Wills, Neville, 25, 27, 29
Wilson, Anya, 137138, 153, 155
Wilson, Brian, 69
Wonder, Stevie, 52, 126, 137, 181, 238
Wood, Ron, 205, 207, 220
Woodmansey, Mick Woody, 12, 118119, 125,
139, 145, 157, 159, 186, 191, 19293; as
Scientology convert, 174175, 180, 193; pay
dissatisfaction (1973), 186187, 189; sacking
of, 193, 195
Wooster, College of (Ohio), 378
Wozniak, Steve, 322
Wyper, Olav, 94, 99, 103104, 116, 117118,

122, 124
Yamamoto, Kansai, 165, 166, 178, 188, 211
The Yardbirds, 32, 48, 171172, 175
Young, Neil, 39, 138
Young, Roy, 259, 260, 261, 262
The Young Gods, 367
Zanetta, Tony, 128, 157, 173, 176, 177, 186, 222,
223, 225226, 302; on Defries, 126, 140, 147,
201, 218; plays Warhol in Pork, 144145, 148;
at MainMan, 147148, 149, 150, 169, 188,
192, 204205, 207, 217219; introduces DB to
Warhol, 148; on DB and drugs, 205, 209
Zoolander (Ben Stiller film), 379
Zysblat, Bill, 319, 347, 373, 374, 392

* This lovely phrase derives from leather

tanners who would cure their hides in rivers. If
they didnt watch them closely, theyd float away
and all their work and money would be lost.

Table of Contents
Also by Paul Trynka
Copyright
Introduction: Genius Steals
Part One: I Hope I Make It On My Own
1
When Im Five
2
Numero Uno, Mate!
3
Thinking About Me
4
Laughing Gnome
5
I Wish Something Would Happen
6
Check Ignition
7
All the Madmen
8
Kooks
9

Over the Rainbow

10
Battle Cries and Champagne
Part Two: Where Things Are Hollow
11
Star
12
The Changing isnt Free
13
Make Me Break Down and Cry
14
White Stains
15
Ghosts in the Echo Chambers
16
Helden
17
I Am Not a Freak
18
Snapshot of a Brain
19
On the Other Side
20

Its My Life So Fuck Off

21
The Hearts Filthy Lesson
22
The Houdini Mechanism
Discography
Notes and Sources
Acknowledgements
Index